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• i VSlUvilMr itj 'i^’/^v' viA't 111 





( 


\ 


TWO MARRIAGES, 


BY THE AUTHOR OF 


“JOHN HALIFAX, GENTLEMAN,” “CHRISTIAN’S MISTAKE” 

“A NOBLE LIFE,” “A LIFE FOR A LIFE,” 

“ FAIRY BOOK,” &c. 

'p ‘rlUuv;. i K ^ rx ‘ ^ 

r* ‘ V3jv .L__ '■ 


“ Hearken, son : 
I’ll tell thee of two fathers.” 


NEW YORK AND LONDON! 

HARPER & BROTHERS, PUBLISHERS, 

1904 


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INSCRIBED TO 


a. m, jn., 

FRIEND, READER, AND CRITIC, 
WITH OUR LOVE. 





JOHN BOWERBANK’S WIFE. 



JOHN BOWERBANK’S WIFE. 


CHAPTER L 

“ Well, I am glad it has come off at last, for never 
was there a wedding so talked about,” said Mrs. Smiles. 

“ It hasn’t come off yet,” replied Mrs. Knowle, shaking 
her head mysteriously. “ And, for my part, even though 
we sit here, in the very church, with the clerk arranging 
the cushions, and poor John Bowerbank — he looks nerv- 
ous, doesn’t he? even though he’s an elderly man and 
a widower — walking up and down the aisle before our 
very eyes — I say, Mrs. Smiles, I shall never believe, till 
I see the ring on her finger, that they are really married. 
How strange it seems ! Poor Emily Kendal — John Bow- 
erbank’s wife !” 

“ Why do you say ‘ poor Emily Kendal,’ ‘ poor John 
Bowerbank,’ when it is such a suitable match — except in 
years perhaps; but a man’s age is of no consequence. 
And then Miss Kendal looks so much older than she 
really is, and is such a grave, sedate sort of person — 
grown old-maidish already. I’m sure, when I looked at 
her at their farewell dinner-party last week in Queen 
Anne Street — I could hardly believe it was only two 


8 


Two Marriages. 

years since the ball there, when she came of age. Such 
a splendid affair! Do you remember it?” 

“ Indeed I do I” said abruptly the other lady, who had 
not been paying much attention to Mrs. Smiles’s conver- 
sation. Her broad, honest, regular-featured Lancashire 
face — she had been one of the fair “ Lancashire witches” 
till she developed into coarseness of color and size — was 
fixed earnestly upon the church door, where John Bow- 
erbank had just entered, and where his wife to be was 
expected every moment to enter. But Mrs. Knowle care- 
fully hid herself — the good woman 1 who was usually not 
at all given to surreptitious proceedings — behind the cur- 
tains of the pew, which was in that gloomy old church, so 
noted for fashionable weddings — St. George’s, Hanover 
Square. By the number and style of the guests, this was 
evidently a fashionable wedding too ; and Mrs. Smiles — 
a bright, dapper, shallow little Londoner — evidently long- 
ing to see more of the fine dresses, proposed that they 
should change their places, and get a little nearer to the 
altar. 

“ Ho, I don’t want her to see me. She mightn’t like 
it,” said Mrs. Knowle. 

“ Why not? — when your husband is a partner in John 
Bowerbank’s firm, and they have always been such, 
friends? I’m sure I fully expected you would have been 
asked to the wedding.” 

“ So I was, but I declined to go. I couldn’t somehow. 
I was certain it would be very bad for her, poor thing I” 
added Mrs. Knowle to herself. 

But her little mystery, whatever it was, escaped Mrs. 
Smiles’s penetration, for just then that lady’s whole atten- 


9 


Two Marriages. 

tion was engrossed by tbe primary object of this sight, 
gazed at by all assembled in church with the fervid ea- 
gerness of women over weddings — the bride. 

John Bowerbank’s wife — or to be made such in fifteen 
minutes — was a little lady, fragile and white, whom you 
could hardly distinguish clearly under her mass of snowy 
silk, her clouds of lace, and her tremulous wreath of 
orange-blossoms. 

“ She is shaking a good deal, poor lamb !” said Mrs. 
Knowle, half in soliloquy. “ And how tightly she holds 
her father’s arm !” 

“Mr. Kendal has been a good father, people say; 
though he won’t stand thwarting, he always will have his 
own way. Perhaps she’s sorry to leave him, being the 
only child.” 

“Hum!” again soliloquized Mrs. Knowle. “Hush! 
the service is beginning.” 

It was soon begun — soon ended — the solemn words 
which made Emily Kendal John Bowerbank’s wife. She 
rose up from her knees and he rose up too — that grave, 
gray-haired, commonplace, and yet not ill-looking bride- 
groom — thirty years at least her senior. Ko longer nerv- 
ous now, he gave her his arm, and led her away to the 
vestry, through the open door of which the two ladies 
observed him stop, formally and in a business-like way — 
he was a thorough man of business — to lift her veil, and 
give her the first conjugal kiss. 

“ Well ! it’s all over ; but I never thought I should see 
this day,” said Mrs. Knowle, her broad, honest breast re- 
lieving itself of much pent-up feeling with a great sigh. 
“Poor dear girl! poor little Emily !” 


10 


Two Marriages. 


“ Why will you call her ‘ poor?’ ” persisted Mrs. Smiles. 
“ I’m sure I should be delighted to see any one of my 
girls make so good a marriage ; and to such a thoroughly 
respectable husband — ‘ John Bowerbank & Co., Mer- 
chants, Liverpool.’ Why, their name is as good as the 
bank ; as you ought to know, who have been in the firm 
so many years. And as for the gentleman himself, though 
I never saw him before to-day, he seems really quite the 
gentleman ; and I, for one, would far rather give a daugh- 
ter to an elderly man — even a widower, of good means 
and unimpeachable character, than to any harem-scarem 
young fellow, who would soon make ducks and drakes 
of her money — and Miss Kendal has a great deal of 
money, I understand ?” 

“ Yes — more’s the pity. Fifty thousand pounds.” 

“ Was it so much ?” said Mrs. Smiles, in great awe. 

“ Yes — for she said to me one day she wished she could 
change it into fifty thousand pence.” 

“ She must have been out of her senses.” 

“ Perhaps she was, poor dear, for the time. But now 
she has apparently got into them again, and made a pru- 
dent marriage — an admirably prudent marriage. But, 
oh my dear, when I married Edward Knowle, and he 
was a clerk and I was a milliner, and we had but two 
hundred a jmar between us, we were happy people — hap- 
pier than these I For we loved one another, and we mar- 
ried for love. And there was not a single ‘cause or im- 
pediment’ in the sight of Grod or man why we should not 
marry. Which — God forgive her — is more than I can 
say of John Bowerbank’s wife.” 

Mrs. Smiles looked so shocked, so frightened, that too- 


11 


Two Marriages. 

candid Mrs. Knowle could almost have cut her tongue 
out for the foolish speech she had made. She knew that 
Mrs. Smiles was a terrible gossip ; but she also knew that 
a certain dim sense of duty and pride, which exists in 
many great talkers, made her, however unscrupulous over 
a secret which she had ferreted out or guessed at, if hon- 
estly trusted, by no means untrustworthy. With a sud- 
den decision — for the position was critical enough — the 
good Liverpool lady turned to her London friend — who 
was not a bad woman in her way — and said earnestly, 

“I’m sorry I ever let a word drop, Mrs. Smiles, for it 
was a very painful business — though it is all over now. 
I’ll tell it you, and depend upon your never telling it 
again, though it was nothing discreditable, my dear, I do 
assure you. Indeed, as regards character, not a word 
could ever be breathed against Emily Kendal, or her 
father either. They bear a perfectly unblemished name. 
And perhaps what happened was nothing more than hap- 
pens to almost every girl in her teens — they fall in love 
and out of love a dozen times before they marry — but I 
never thought Emily was that sort of girl either.” 

“And was she in love? or engaged? Do tell me. 
Who was it? Any body I know?” said Mrs. Smiles, 
eagerly. 

Mrs. Knowle wished herself at the bottom of the sea 
before she had let her feelings carry her away into making 
such a cruel mistake, such a fatal admission ; but still the 
only safe way to remedy it was to tell the whole truth, and 
then trust to her friend’s sense of honor. After all, it 
was not a very terrible truth. As she had well said, the 
thing happens dozens of times to dozens of girls. 


12 


Two Marriages. 


“ I’ll tell you the whole story, Mrs. Smiles, if you will 
promise not to speak of it. Not that ‘ it’ was any thing 
bad ; poor dears ! they were so young, it was such a nat- 
ural thing for them to fall in love ; but it caused us — my 
husband and me — a great deal of trouble at the time, for 
it happened in our house.” 

“ This love affair?” 

“ Yes, a real love affair — not a bit like poor John Bow- 
erbank’s sober courtship, but an old-fashioned love affair ; 
heart-warm — so warm that Edward said it put him in 
mind of our own young days. And the people were — ” 

“ I can guess, for I was with you two days of the time 
of Emily Kendal’s visit, and I think I can see as far into 
a millstone as most people. It was young Stenhouse ?” 

Mrs. Knowle nodded, with a sad look in her kindly 
eyes. “Just so! Poor fellow, I have scarcely spoken 
his name — even to my husband — ever since he sailed to 
India, a year and half ago. We were so sorry to lose 
him. He was a clerk in our firm, you know — entered 
the office as a boy of fifteen — and that was how he came 
so much to our house while she was visiting us. And he 
was a fine young fellow, quite the gentleman ; and she 
was a lass in her teens, and a bonny lass she was too, 
then — so of course they fell in love with one another — 
and, mercy me I how could I help it 1 He behaved very 
honorably, poor fellow 1 came and told me at once, as 
soon as ever he had proposed to her — that is, if he ever 
did formally propose. I rather think not, but that they 
found each other’s feelings by the merest accident. For 
I remember he said to me, in such a burst of passion as I 
never saw yet in mortal man, ‘ I’ve been an ass, and som? 


13 


Two Marriages. 

folk might call me a knave — for she has fifty thousand 
pounds, and I haven’t a halfpenny!’ Poor lad! — poor 
lad!” 

“And what did you do?” 

“What could I do — shut the stable-door when the 
steed was stolen ? Why, my dear woman, I told you — 
the poor things loved one another.” 

An argument which did not seem to weigh very much 
with Mrs. Smiles. She drew herself up with dignity. 

“ A most unfortunate and ill-advised attachment. I, as 
a mother of a family of daughters, must certainly say — ” 

“ What would you say ?” 

“ That I would consider it my duty to prevent it.” 

“How could I prevent it?” exclaimed Mrs. Knowle, 
pathetically, as if the troubles her warm heart had under- 
gone at that time were bitter even in remembrance. 
“Here were two nice young people — one nineteen, the 
other five-and-twenty, meeting every day — liking one 
another’s company, finding out continually how well they 
suited and how dearly they enjoyed being together. In 
truth, the very sight of them walking under the lilac- 
trees, or sitting outside the drawing-room window with a 
heap of books between them, talking, and reading, and 
laughing to themselves in their innocent, childish way, 
used to do my heart good. Many a time I thought, if 
God had been pleased to give Edward and me such a 
daughter, or if our little Edward, that’s lying waiting for 
his mother, in Hale church-yard — well, that’s nonsense !” 
said the good woman, with a sudden pause and choking 
of the voice : “ all I mean is, that in our childless house 
those young people were very pleasant company ; and I 


14 


Two Marriages. 

used often to think if either of them was my own, oh, 
wouldn’t I do a deal to make them both happy ! But it 
wasn’t to be — it wasn’t to be. And now she has gone 
and married John Bowerbank.” 

“ ISTot,” continued the lady, after a pause, “ not that I 
have a word to say against John Bowerbank. He is Mr. 
Kendal’s friend, and my husband’s friend ; the three are 
all about the same age, too. He is a very good man ; 
but he isn’t John Stenhouse. And oh me ! when I call 
to mind how fond John Stenhouse was of Emily Kendal, 
and how fond poor Emily was of him — of all the misery 
they went through together — of the nights I sat by her 
bedside till she sobbed herself to sleep — and of the days 
when young Stenhouse went to and fro between our 
house and the counting-house, with his face as white as 
death, and his lips fiercely set, and a look of stony de- 
spair in his eyes. Oh ! my dear, I think I must have 
been dreaming when I saw the wedding this morning. 
How could she do it ?” 

“Did she do it — what did she do?” 

“Well, not much, after all, I suppose,” said Mrs. Knowle, 
with a sigh. “ Edward and I vexed ourselves very much 
about it at the time; and yet such things occur every 
day, and people think nothing about them. We did, 
though. We couldn’t see any reason on earth why Mr. 
Kendal should have blamed us so severely for ‘ allowing’ 
such a thing to happen. Allowing? As if we possibly 
could have prevented it I As if, believing firmly that a 
real good marriage with a good man is the best thing 
that can befall any young woman, it would ever have 
occurred to us to try and prevent it I But Mr. Kendal 


16 


Two Marriages. 

thought differently. When John Stonehouse wrote to 
him for his consent, and my Edward inclosed it in the 
very civilest, friendliest letter, detailing all Mr. Sten- 
house’s circumstances and our high respect for him, and 
his being a fit husband for any girl, except in not having 
money, which, as Miss Kendal had plenty, didn’t signify 
— well, I say, when the old man came down upon us like 
a thunderbolt, and dismissed John from the house, and 
insisted on carrying Emily away, only she took to her 
bed with a nervous fever and couldn’t be moved, I own 
I was surprised. My dear, the poet says ‘ Fathers have 
flinty hearts but it’s my belief they have no hearts at 
all. How that old fellow could have looked at that poor 
little girl of his — his daughter, wasted to a skeleton — ly- 
ing on her bed with her pretty eyes (that were the image 
of her mother’s when Mr. Kendal married her) fixed on 
the ceiling with such a hopeless look, and her pretty 
mouth, that never gave her father a sharp word back, 
but only whispered to me sometimes, ‘Please don’t let 
him be unkind to John’ — how he could do it, and call 
himself a Christian, and go to church every Sunday, / 
don’t understand ! You must recollect,” continued Mrs. 
Knowle, “ that John Stenhouse was not a bad fellow, 
neither lowborn nor ill-educated — that not a living soul 
had ever breathed a syllable against his character. There 
was no earthly reason for refusing him except that he 
was a clerk in a merchant’s office and she was a barris- 
ter’s daughter; he had nothing, and she had fifty thou- 
sand pounds. That was the bottom of it, I know — the 
cursed, cursed money, as my husband said. Mr. Kendal 
wanted her to make what he called a suitable marriage — 


16 Two Marriages. 

that is, where every thing was right and proper^money 
equal, position equal — all done according to rule — gen- 
tleman coming a courting for a month or two — lady 
smilingly receiving polite attentions — then gentleman 
going first to ask papa’s consent, and, that given, making 
a formal offer, and being accepted and married immedi- 
ately in grand style, with six bridesmaids, and twenty 
carriages with white horses, just as we had to-day. Oh, 
how could she do it? But perhaps she couldn’t help it. 
I saw from the first she was a weak, gentle creature. 
Why, she used to go into hysterics and fainting-fits, when 
I would have faced that old tyrant with a heart as hard 
as his own. Bless my life ! I would have fought through 
a regiment of soldiers for the sake of my Edward ; but 
she — the frail, trembling lamb — poor thing — poor 
thing!” 

And the large, loud Lancashire woman, with the wom- 
anly heart, dropped a tear or two, which she smothered 
in her laced pocket-handkerchief, and turned out of the 
quiet street in Mayfair, where the two ladies were talk- 
ing and walking, into one that led toward Queen Anne 
Street. 

“For,” said she, “ I must get a peep at her when she 
goes away. I was very fond of poor Emily Kendal.” 

“But tell me the rest of her story,” pleaded Mrs. 
Smiles. “ Indeed I will never repeat it. And whom 
should I repeat it to? for I scarcely know any body in 
her circle, and she is now removing quite out of it. I 
suppose she will settle permanently in Liverpool ?” 

“Yes; John Bowerbank has one of the handsomest 
houses in all Birkenhead. His long widowhood alone 


17 


Two Marriages. ■ 

hindered his taking his place at the very top of our Liv- 
erpool society. Now he will do it — for he is a social 
man and likes show — quite a different person from poor 
John Stenhouse, who would have spent evening after 
evening by his own fireside with his books or his piano- 
playing — he was the finest musician ever I knew, and 
built a chamber organ with his very own hands. I have 
it still, for he left it to me when he went abroad.” 

“ Why did he go abroad ?” 

“ I’ll tell you — at least so far as I know, for he was 
very communicative up to a certain point, and then he 
ceased, and held his tongue entirely, and I couldn’t ‘pump’ 
him, you know. Besides, if I came within a mile of the 
subject, the look of his face frightened me. He was ter- 
ribly in love with Emily Kendal.” 

“ It’s a bad thing to be terribly in love, and not at 
all conducive to the comfort of society,” observed Mrs. 
Smiles, sententiously ; but Mrs. Knowle was too full of 
her own remembrances to reply. 

“Oh, what a day that was, when, after John Sten- 
house’s letter, down came Mr. Kendal to Liverpool after 
his daughter. Oh, the daily storms we lived in — morn- 
ing, noon, and night — the interviews in our dining-room, 
and in the poor little thing’s bedroom, for she took to her 
bed the very first day. How we argued, and reasoned, 
and comforted, and advised — I, and my good man — for 
we felt to those two young people just as if they were our 
own children ; and we wondered, with an amazement that 
childless people often feel when they see how other peo- 
ple throw away their blessings, what could have possessed 
the old father to see his only child almost dying before 


18 


Two Marriages. 

him^ and go on killing her — for her own good, he said ; but, 
as every body else said, just for his own pride and vexa- 
tion at thwarted authority. Money, too — money was at 
the root of it all. If John Stenhouse had been in the po- 
sition of John Bowerbank, Mr. Kendal would have gone 
down on his knees and worshiped him — I know he would. 
As it was, he just kicked him out of doors.” 

“ That was rather ungentlemanly.” 

“ I don’t mean literally ; Mr. Kendal is never that. Be- 
sides, he had his own credit to keep up ; he had always 
borne the character of being the best of fathers — as per- 
haps he had been till this happened. We are all of us 
very perfect creatures so long as we are not tried. Gra- 
cious me 1 when I looked to-day at that stately, handsome 
old gentleman, who, when he was asked, ‘ Who giveth 
this woman to be married to this man,’ looked so smiling 
and benignant, and remember what I have seen him look 
like ! It’s a queer world — a very queer world, my dear.” 

Mrs. Smiles agreed ; she generally agreed in every 
thing with every body at the time. 

“Well, the poor young fellow was dismissed. Of 
course there was no help for it ; the girl being under age, 
the father had the law in his own hands. Nothing short 
of an elopement, which no honorable man like John Sten- 
house would ever have dreamed of, could have saved 
poor Emily. And then her money — ‘her detestable 
money,’ as her lover called it more than once. Every 
bit of honest pride in him was galled and stung to the 
quick. ‘ Her father thinks — all the world will think that 
I wanted her for her money,’ he used to say ; and some- 
times this feeling was so strong in him that I fancied he 


19 


Two Marriages. 

was half inclined to draw back and give her up. But I 
told him not to be such a coward, for it was cowardice ; 
fear of the wicked tongues and not of the good ones. 
Nobody who saw sweet Emily Kendal and honest John 
Stenhouse would have doubted that they were marrying 
for love — real love. But, my dear, I’m growing terribly 
long-winded, and it’s nearly two o’clock : and they were 
to leave at half past, the bridegroom and the bride. Oh 
dear me ! and once we planned her traveling dress that 
she was to go away in with poor dear John I” 

Here Mrs. Knowle became unintelligible, and Mrs. 
Smiles fidgeted a little ; for, despite her interest in the 
love-tale, she was beginning to want her lunch. 

“Well, the rest of the story lies in a nutshell, for I 
have never got to the bottom of the matter yet, and I 
never shall now. John and Emily parted in the old fa- 
ther’s presence — he insisted upon that — and my presence 
too, for Emily begged I would stay. And at the last — 
oh ! how she clung round the young man’s neck, and 
promised him faithfully that she would marry him, and no 
one but him. x\nd he promised her as solemnly — and 
John Stenhouse is a man who never breaks his word — 
that if he were alive on the day she came of age, he 
would claim her again, and marry her * in spite of man 
or devil.’ He said that — those very words, for he seemed 
half maddened by the cruelty shown to her — the tender, 
delicate girl, made to be loved and taken care of. And 
then he kissed her — oh, how he kissed her ! It makes 
me cry to think of it even now.” 

“ Poor fellow I But, for all that, it would have been a 
very imprudent marriage,” said Mrs. Smiles, coldly. 


20 


Two Marriages. 


“Imprudent or not, it never came about, you see, 
though what happened I have never found out. Most 
certainly John Stenhouse formed no other attachment. 
He worked hard in the office, and out of office hours led 
a most solitary life. He did not even ask about Emily 
Kendal ; though sometimes when, intentionally, I used to 
mention her, he listened as if he was drinking in every 
word. And I took care that during the two years he 
should hear about her all I heard myself. This was not 
a great deal, for her father kept her separated from me 
as much as he could, which was human nature, I sup- 
pose. But I had news of her sometimes, and always told 
them to John. The only thing I did not tell him was a 
rumor which reached me — so ridiculous it seemed then, 
that my husband and I only laughed at it — of her in- 
tended marriage to John Bowerbank.” 

“I remember it was I who told you, and how indig- 
nant you looked. But you see I was right, after all,” 
said Mrs. Smiles, not without a little air of self-satisfac- 
tion. 

“Well, no matter now. John never named Emily’s 
name, nor do I know if he ever heard the report or not ; 
but certainly just about that time he went up to London. 
Whether it was to claim Emily, whether he asked her 
again and she refused him, or whether he heard the re- 
port about her and John Bowerbank, and never did come 
forward and ask her, goodness only knows ! All I know 
is, that within two months of Emily’s coming of age, 
without my ever seeing him — for I was laid down with 
that bad fever, you know, and Edward was too miserable 
about me to care much for any body outside — John Stem 


21 


Two Marriages. 

house had quitted Liverpool and sailed for India. And 
there he i^ now, for aught I know. He does not forget 
us, poor fellow ; he writes to us at Christmas always, and 
this year he sent an Indian shawl to reach me on my 
birthday. But he never names Emily, and he never 
gave the slightest explanation about any thing.” 

“ Perhaps,” suggested Mrs. Smiles, “ there was nothing 
to explain. The young lady had changed her mind, that 
was all. And no wonder. A marriage with the head 
of the firm instead of one of the junior clerks is so very 
much more suitable. But look ! is not that the carriage 
driving up ? Mr. Bowerbank’s, I presume. Oh dear ! if 
I could but see one of my daughters driving away in her 
own carriage !” 

Mrs. Knowle did not answer. She stood half hidden 
behind the groups of idle gazers which always gather to 
stare at a bride. There was a mingled expression in her 
frank, rosy face — half pity, half tenderness, yet flitting 
ever and anon across it a shadow of something else — a 
something not unlike contempt. Coarse-looking, uncul- 
tured woman as she was, she possessed that which makes 
at once woman’s utmost softness and utmost strength — a 
loving heart and a clear conviction — though she was not 
clever enough to put it into thoughts, still less into words 
— of the divineness of Love. Love, which, when mutual, 
gives and exacts nothing less than the entire soul of man 
and woman, and enforces as an absolute duty the truth 
of which marriage is but the outward sign, seal, and rati- 
fication — “ What God hath joined together let not man 
put asunder.” 

“ I wonder what made her marry him!” murmured the 


22 


Two Marriages. 

good matron of thirty years’ standing. “ My patience ! 
if I had given up Edward Knowle, what would he have 
thought of me ! What . will John Stenhouse think of 
her?” 

“ Nothing at all, probably. He may be married by 
this time himself.” 

“ I don’t believe it — I’ll never believe it. Men may be 
bad enough, but they’re not so bad as women. They’ll 
not often sell themselves, soul and body, out of mere 
cowardice, or break a solemn plighted promise from sheer 
fear.” 

“ But her father — she was bound to obey her father.” 

“ No she wasn’t,” replied Mrs. Knowle, sternly and 
strongly. “ My dear, you’re not bound to obey any man 
living, not even your own husband, who is a mighty deal 
closer to you than your father, when he tells you to do a 
wrong thing. If Edward Knowle said to me, ‘ Emma, 
I’m hungry, I want you to chop yourself up into mince- 
meat for me’ — well, perhaps I might do it, if he really 
wanted it, and it harmed no one but myself. But if he 
said, ‘ Emma, I’m hungry, and I want you to go and steal 
that leg of mutton,’ I should say, * No, sir. God’s law is 
a higher law than obedience to you. Steal your legs of 
mutton for yourself.’ But stop — they’ve opened the hall 
door — she’s coming.” 

She came — the little pale bride. Not even the excite^ 
ment of the bridal gayeties, the breakfast, the Champagne, 
and the speeches, could make her any thing but pale. 
She leant on the arm of her father, who was an extreme- 
ly handsome, gentlemanly, well-dressed, and low-voiced 
personage. He put her into the carriage with the utmost 


23 


Two Marriages, 

paternal care, with a kiss and a benediction, both of which 
she received passively. She seemed altogether a passive, 
frail, gentle creature, such a one as a brave, strong man 
would take and shelter in his arms, and love all the dear- 
er for her very helplessness. And John Bowerbank, 
though elderly, almost old, did not look like a weak man, 
or an untender man. Far stronger, far tenderer — the two 
qualities usually go together — than the bride’s handsome 
and elegant father. 

“Poor thing!” muttered Mrs. Knowle to herself 
“Well, in one sense, it’s an escape. He’s an honest man, 
John Bowerbank. Perhaps she may be happy — at least, 
less unhappy than she looks now. God bless her I” 

And with that cordial blessing, unheard, and a few 
kindly tears, unseen by her for whom they were shed, 
for in truth the bride did not seem much to hear and see 
any thing, the carriage drove away. Thus terminated 
the principal scene, and thus vanished the principal act- 
ors in that grand show wedding, which had been quite 
satisfactory and successful in all its elements, with the 
exception of one trifling omission, not unfrequently oc- 
curring in similar ceremonies — Love. 


24 


Two Marriages, 


CHAPTEK IL 

Before telling the simple sad story — it does not pre- 
tend to be any thing but a sad story — of John Bower- 
bank’s wife, I should like to say a word for John Bower- 
bank. 

The most obvious description of him, and almost uni- 
versal criticism upon him, was the common phrase, “ He 
was a thorough man of business a character which, out 
of business circles, it is a little the fashion to decry, or, at 
least, to mention with a condescending apology. Hard 
to say why, since any acute reasoner may perceive that 
it takes some of the very finest qualities of real manhood 
to make a “thorough man of business.” A man exact, 
persevering, shrewd, enterprising, with a strong percep- 
tion of his own rights, and an equally fair judgment, and 
honest admission of the rights of his neighbor: who from 
conscience, common sense, and prudence takes care ever 
to do to others as he would be done by ; who has firm- 
ness enough to strike the clear balance between justice 
and generosity ; who is honest before he is benevolent, 
and righteous before he is compassionate ; who will de- 
fraud no man, nor, if he can help it, suffer any man to 
defraud him ; who is careful in order to be liberal, and 
accurate that he may compel accuracy in those about 
him ; who, though annoyed by the waste or misappro- 


25 


Two Marriages, 

priation of a pound, would not grudge thousands, spent 
in a lawful, wise, and creditable way — a man of whom 
his enemies may say sarcastically that he is a “ near” man, 
a “sharp” man, a man who “can push his way in the 
world ;” yet half the world’s work — and good work too — 
is done by him, and the like of him — done far more suc- 
cessfully, far more nobly, than by your great geniuses, 
who aim at every thing and effect little or nothing — your 
grand incompletenesses, who only sadden one by the 
hopelessness of their failures. Better than to be a poet, 
whose ignoble life lags haltingly behind his noble poetry ; 
a statesman, who tries to mend the world, and forgets that 
the first thing to be mended is himself ; or a philanthro- 
pist, who loves all mankind, but neglects his own family 
— better far than all these, in the long run, is the thorough 
man of business, the secret of whose career is the one 
simple maxim, “ Any thing worth doing at all is worth 
doing well.” 

Whatever else people might say of John Bowerbank — 
and they had said much, both bad and good, during his 
life of nearly sixty years — they always said of him this — 
that he had never shuffled out of an undertaking nor 
broken a promise ; never begged, borrowed, nor stolen — 
cheating is stealing — one shilling from any man; and 
though his aims might not be lofty, and his daily life far 
removed from the heroic, still he was a good, honest man, 
and (as I repeat, with exceeding respect for the epithet) 
a thorough man of business. 

But there was nothing the least interesting about him. 
His figure was short and stumpy, and his gray hair bris- 
tled funnily round his smooth bald head. He could not, 


26 


Two Marriages. 


by any force of imagination, be turned into a romantic 
personage. That his life had had its romance was not 
improbable; few lives are without. It might have been 
— who knows? — connected with a certain grave (which 
Mrs. Knowle once found, when visiting her own little 
grave in Hale church-yard, and ever after looked kindlier 
on the man for the sake of it) which bore the inscription 
“Jane, wife of Mr John Bowerbank” (he was not Es- 
quire then), “ who died in childbirth, was here interred 
with her infant son” nearly forty years ago. 

But so completely forgotten had been this episode in 
his life, that most people thought John Bowerbank an 
old bachelor ; and when he grew in years and honors, so 
much so that it was rumored he had declined being made 
Sir John Bowerbank solely because knighthood was a 
small thing, and baronetcy, to a man without heirs, a 
blank sort of dignity, nobody suspected he would marry ; 
nor, when he did marry, was he suspected of marrying 
in any but a business-like way — to secure a pleasant mis- 
tress for his splendid house, a cheerful companion for his 
declining years. And, let the truth be owned, he did 
marry only for this. He was not one bit in love. The 
solitary passion of his life had blazed up and burnt itsel f 
out, or rather been extinguished by the hand of fate, and 
it was too late to light up any other. 

He did not marry Emily Kendal for love, nor — which, 
perhaps, was the secret of her finally consenting to marry 
him — had he made any foolish pretense of doing so. He 
respected her character, he liked her well, in a tender, 
fatherly sort of way ; but “ Jane, wife of Mr. John Bow- 
erbank,” now sleeping in her peaceful grave, need not 


27 


Two Marriages, 

have had the slightest jealousy over — nay, would hardly 
have recognized the middle-aged gentleman who was 
the “ happy bridegroom” that sunshiny morning in St. 
George’s, Hanover Square. 

Perhaps this was a good thing for Emily. In her hus- 
band’s unexacting and undemonstrative regard, more pa- 
ternal than lover-like, she found the rest which was the 
only thing for which she craved ; and in his steady, se- 
date, persistent character, which aimed at nothing higher 
than it accomplished, and sought from her no more than 
she was able to give, she found a little of the comfort 
which she once thought was hopeless to her in this world. 
She, who had begun life with a girl’s dreams of perfec- 
tion, and proved them all false ; who, in her weakness — 
weaker than most women’s — had leaned on one stay after 
another, and found them all pierce her like broken reeds, 
experienced in her calm, cold marriage with this kind, 
good, practical man, a certain peace, which, after all the 
tempests of her youth, was not without its soothing charm. 
Also, to one of her weak, hesitating nature, the mere 
sense of her fate being irrevocably settled — of leaning on 
somebod}^, and having somebody on whom she was 
bound to lean — of passing out of the flowery flelds and 
dark precipices of her troubled life into the smooth, hard, 
iron tramway of duty, conveyed a feeling of relief 

For the first three months of her marriage every body 
said how well Mrs. John Bowerbank was looking — bet- 
ter than any body ever expected to see Emily Kendal 
look in this world, for most people had set her down as 
the doomed inheritor of her mother’s disease — consump- 
tion, decline, atrophy — whatever name be given to the 


28 


Two Marriages. 


outward tokens of an inward grief, which kills the spring 
of youth, and makes life a weariness and the grave the 
only rest. 

It can not be said that marriage caused any great change 
in John Bowerbank — he was too old for that. But he 
lost some of his crotchety, old-bachelor ways; moved 
with a certain air of content and pride about his hand- 
some house, and was carefully mindful of his delicate and 
sweet-looking young wife, whom he took to state dinner- 
parties, and introduced among the blooming, florid, and 
a little too conspicuously dressed Liverpool ladies, where 
she looked not unlike a lily of the valley in the midst of 
a bed of tulips and ranunculuses. 

So they lived their life, these two. Not a domestic 
life by any means ; Mr. Bowerbank had never been used 
to that, nor Mrs. Bowerbank neither. She had dreamed 
of it once — of the honor and happiness of being a poor 
man’s wife ; of mending his shirts and stockings ; of 
looking after his dinners and making the best of every 
thing ; counting no economies mean that were to lighten 
the toil of the bread-winner ; no labors hard that were to 
add to his comfort, toward whom love made even the 
humblest service the most natural thing in the world. 

But this was not Emily’s lot. She was a rich woman, 
married to a rich man ; nothing was expected of her but 
elegant idleness. Once this might have been to her wea- 
riness intolerable; but she had long been passive and 
languid, glad to do nothing, and to be just whatever she 
fancied, since nobody ever insisted upon her being any 
thing — a life that some would have called happy, and, 
especially in its outside aspect, have envied exceedingly. 


29 


Two Marriages. 

“ She’s an old man’s darling,” said one of the young 
Liverpool ladies, commenting on Mrs. Bowerbank to her 
neighbor and occasional, though not very intimate visitor, 
Mrs. Knowle. “ It’s better anyhow than being ‘ a young 
man’s slave.’ ” 

“ I’m not sure of that,” half-grimly, half-comically re- 
plied the other. “ I hope, my dear, you’ll be pretty much 
of a slave to your husband (as I am this day to Edward 
Knowle), or you’d best not marry at all.” 

But such love -servitude was not Emily’s lot. She 
never trotted after John Bowerbank with his big boots 
of a morning, or brushed his coat, or found him his 
gloves ; she never ran to open the door of evenings, or 
settled his cushions for his after-dinner sleep. They had 
servants to do all that, so why should she ? In truth, it 
never occurred to her to do it. 

She dressed herself carefully and sat at the head of 
her husband’s table; she drove in his carriage about the 
country — solitary, peaceful, meditative drives; or she 
paid a fev^ courtesy calls after the entertainments to 
which — arrayed in the most perfect of costumes — he 
seemed pleased to take her. He never was cross with 
her ; never asked her if she was happy ; tried doubtless 
in his own way to make her so, for he was a kindly-na- 
tured man ; but he was not observant, nor sensitive, nor 
over-sympathetic. Besides, he was old, and all his youth, 
if he ever had any, had been buried long ago in Hale 
church-yard. 

Mrs. Knowle told — not at the time, but afterward— 
how, one Christmas day, which was one of the rare holi- 
days at the Exchange — and Mr. Bowerbank was a man 


30 


Two Marriages. 

who never took a holiday illegally — she saw him cross- 
ing the long frosted grass of this said church-yard, alone, 
though he had not been married many months, to stand 
by that grave, of which the mossy headstone still re- 
mained, but the mound had long grown level with the 
turf If his eyes could have peered below, he would 
have found nothing of wife or child but a little handful 
of bones. Another wife now sat at his splendid, not 
humble hearth ; possibly another child might — 

Yes, this was what they said of him, the ill-natured 
portion of his friends : how, since the offer of the baro- 
netcy, a certain dawning pride of race, the truly English 
wish to found a family, had come into the head of grave 
John Bowerbank ; that accordingly he had, in his grave 
and practical way, conceived the idea, however late in 
life, of marrying, and had accordingly looked round on 
all his eligible young lady acquaintances, until, in his 
practical eye, he found one who, for her own sweet se- 
dateness, he thought would be a suitable mate for an el- 
derly man ; and accordingly, without much inquiry as to 
her feelings, and having, indeed, arranged the whole mat- 
ter, in the most business-like fashion, with his old ac- 
quaintance her father, he married Emily Kendal. 

But when, after a year — the baronetcy being again of- 
fered and accepted — there appeared no heir to these hon* 
ors, undoubtedly Sir John was very much disappointed. 
Of course, he did not show it ; he was too good a man 
for that ; but the placid mien became colder and colder ; 
and though they were not unhappy — it takes a certain 
amount of hope even to create disappointment — still day 
by day the husband and wife went more their own ways; 


31 


Two Marriages. 

saw less and less of one another, as is quite easy in the 
daily life of wealthy people, who have, or think they 
have, so many duties owed to their position and to socie- 
ty. And though Emily still smiled — her soft, languid, 
wistful smile — and nobody ever said an unkind word to 
her, and she, dear soul ! had never said an unkind word 
^o any body in her life, still her cheek grew paler and 
paler, her eyes larger and larger, with a sort of far-away 
look, as if gazing forward into a not distant heaven for 
something on earth never found — something lost or in- 
complete — something without which, though a man 
vihould give the whole substance of his house for, it 
would be utterly in vain. 

Marriage must be heaven or hell. Not at first, per- 
haps, for time softens and mends all things; but after 
time has had its fair license, and failed ; and then comes 
the dead blank, the hopeless endurance, even if sharper 
pangs do not intervene ; the feeling that the last chance 
in life has been taken, the last die thrown — and lost. 

Probably John Bowerbank did not feel thus — his feel- 
ings were never remarkably keen ; and he had his busi- 
ness, his days occupied on ’Change, and his evenings de- 
voted, several times a week, to the long, splendid, in- 
tensely dull, and entirely respectable Liverpool dinner- 
parties. But his wife, left all day at home, with no du- 
ties to fill up the idle, aimless, weary hours, with no chil- 
dren of her own, and too listless and inactive to adopt 
the substitute of other childless matrons — Mrs. Knowle, 
for instance — and take every body else’s children who 
needed it under her motherly wing — to such as poor 
Emily, a marriage like hers most resembles being slowly 


32 


Two Marriages. 

frozen alive in the lake of gilded torment, which forms 
the horror of one of the circles of Dante’s Hell. 

But nobody noticed it, nobody knew it. Her father, 
engaged in the same dining-out existence in London that 
her husband, in a lesser and more harmless degree, en- 
joyed in Liverpool, never visited her — seldom wrote to 
her. When he did, his letters breathed the most envia- 
ble self-satisfaction that he had done the very best for 
her ; that she was perfectly happy ; and it was he, her 
affectionate father, who had secured, after his own pat- 
tern — which, of course, was infallible — her conjugal felic- 
ity. And all the world — his world especially — went on 
as usual, and the people who had most discussed the 
marriage, pro and con, till the heat of wordy war stretch- 
ed over a wide area between its two points of Liverpool 
and London ; even these subsided, as all people so soon 
subside after every marriage, into leaving the two con- 
cerned to bear their own cross or enjoy their own con- 
tent. For, after all, it is their own business, and nobody’s 
else — which it was from the very first, if their affection- 
ate friends could only have believed so. 


Two Marriages. 


33 


CHAPTER HI. 

The two partners and their wives sat at what was in- 
tentionally made a small family dinner of four only, for 
the discussion of some accidental business of importance 
which concerned the firm of John Bowerbank and Co. 
This, however, was deferred until the ladies should retire, 
though the two Liverpool merchants could not quite for- 
bear, even through game and sweets, to let their conver- 
sation flow into its accustomed channel — ships and ship- 
ping, cargoes and consignments, cotton “looking up,” and 
indigo “ pretty firm that mysterious phraseology which 
sounds so odd outside the commercial circle. 

Such and such fragments of their lords’ talk fell upon 
the two ladies’ ears. Mrs. Knowle pricked up hers, for 
she was a shrewd body, and from her very marriage-day 
had flung herself heart and soul into her Edward’s busi- 
ness, until now she was almost capable of going on 
’Change herself. But Lady Bowerbank listened idly, or 
listened not at all, with an equally weary and abstracted 
air. She went through with more than fine-lady indif- 
ference the needful duties of her post as hostess. And 
continually, in the pauses of conversation, and often dur- 
ing the very midst of it, her eyes wandered from the ta- 
ble where she sat to the expanse of rippling, sunshiny 
sea or river, for it was bounded by long low walls and 


B4 Two Marriages. 

hillocks of sand — away, away to the dim, sunset-colored 
west. 

They were dining, not in their magnificent dining-room 
at Birkenhead, but in one of those sea-side houses which 
line the Waterloo shore, whither for a change — the ut- 
most change his stay-at-home nature ever dreamed of — 
Sir John had come for the summer, chiefly on account 
of somebody or other of his acquaintance having dwelt a 
little strongly on the extremely pale cheeks of Lady 
Bowerbank ; for he was a kind husband ; he never 
grudged her any pleasure or any good that was plainly 
suggested to him, though he was not acute at divining 
her need of it. 

Lady Bowerbank had made no objection to the plan ; 
all places were much alike to her ; yet she rather liked 
this place, where the salt breeze was not too strong. It 
amused her to wander about, and watch the rabbits play- 
ing among the sand-hills, or to pick up baskets full of the 
exquisite tiny shells, for which this shore is famous. Not 
that she was conchologically inclined, or knew any thing 
in the world about them, save that they were very pretty. 
Also, that long ago, in the days which seemed to belong 
to another life than this, somebody had once brought her 
a handful of them, which she had kept in her work-box 
— indeed, kept still for that matter. It was no harm ; she 
had a way of keeping things, even trifles, so long, that 
from mere force of habit she kept them on still, often for 
years and years. 

The great peculiarity of her character was, that, though 
weak to resist, she was exceedingly persistent to retain. 
Such anomalies are not rare, but they are the most diffi- 


35 


Two Marriages. 

cult to deal with, and the saddest in all one’s experience 
of life. 

She made no effort to entertain Mrs. Knowle — indeed, 
that good lady always entertained herself— but sat idly 
looking out of the open window, watching the silent ships 
creep up and down along the Mersey, or the long my?» 
terious trail made by the smoke of some yet unseen steam- 
er, the faint “ puff-puff” of whose engines was heard for 
miles off across the quiet river — far away, even round the 
curve of the Hoy lake shore. 

So sat she — gentle Emily Bowerbank — in her lilac pale 
silk, her rich jewellery, and beautiful lace hanging over 
her thin white hands : a pretty sight, even though she 
was so pale ; and a great contrast to large, rosy Mrs. 
Knowle, resplendent in claret-colored satin, and with a 
brooch on her bosom almost as big as her own heart. 
Neither conversed, but paid the customary tribute of si- 
lence to their respective lords, till both were startled by 
a sentence, which indeed made Mrs. Knowle color up as 
if she had been a young girl in her teens, and then sit 
mute with her eyes fixed on her plate. 

“By-the-by, Knowle,” said Sir John, leaning back, and 
folding his hands with the contented aspect of a man 
who, always temperate, yet keenly enjoys the after-din- 
ner hour of wine and dessert, “I have always forgotten 
to ask you, what has become of that young man Sten- 
house, who left us — was it two or four years ago ? — very 
much against my wish, you remember. You got him, I 
think, into a house at Bombay ?” 

“ Yes, Sir John,” replied Mr. Knowle, a little abruptly. 
“Pass the wine, Emma, my dear.” 


36 


Two Marriages. 

“Is lie there still? and how is he getting on?” 

“ Well enough, I believe. He sometimes writes to us, 
though not often. Sir John, this claret is really capital.” 

“ So I think. But,” added he, with the persistency of 
an unsensitive man, who will not be driven from his 
point, “ to return to Stenhouse. I wish, when you write, 
you would tell him Mr. Jones is leaving us. In plain 
truth, there is not a man I would like as senior clerk so 
much as Stenhouse — John, wasn’t his name? John Sten- 
house?” 

“ Yes. Capital fellow, he was,” muttered Mr. Knowle. 
“ Accurate as clock-work, and conscientious and persist- 
ent as — ” 

“ I’ll trouble you for the nut-crackers, Edward,” said 
his helpmate, with a warning frown. 

“Indeed,” continued Sir John, with a way he had of 
sticking to his point through all interruptions, “I fully 
agree with you, Knowle. And what I was about to say 
was this, that if you still keep up acquaintance with the 
young man, could you not suggest to him to return home 
and re-enter our house? we would make it worth his 
while.” 

“ I don’t fancy he’d come. Sir John. He — ^he dislikes 
England. But I’ll think the matter over, and speak to 
you about it to-morrow.” 

“ Very well.” And Sir John helped himself to anoth- 
er glass of claret, and began talking of something else. 

Then, and not till then, the ladies rose ; the guest look 
ing hot and red, the hostess pale as death. Emily stood 
aside to let Mrs. Knowle pass through the door, which 
was politely held open by Sir John, with a whispered 


37 


Two Marriages. 

“ Send us in coffee soon, my dear but when that good 
lady reached the drawing-room, she found herself alone, 
and for half an hour after there was no sign of Lady 
Bowerbank. 

Mrs. Knowle grew exceedingly uncomfortable, not to 
say alarmed. Never since the marriage had she and 
Emily renewed their former intimacy, or been on other 
than the formal terms of visiting acquaintances and part- 
ners’ wives. Emily did not seem to wish it, though she 
was scrupulously kind and even affectionate. But then 
she neither encouraged nor cultivated any body. Life 
was to her an altogether passive thing. And Mrs. Knowle 
had had the good sense, and good feeling, never to en- 
croach on this reserve; never, since circumstances were 
so changed, to make the slightest allusion to their former 
intimacy, nor to intrude upon the present their painful 
relations of the past. Thus, little by little, seeing that 
the silence she desired was unbroken. Lady Bowerbank 
had gone back from her first shrinking, nervous coldness 
into comparative cordiality. Still, it was never warm 
enough to warrant Mrs. Knowle in doing what now was 
her natural impulse, to seek Emily all over the house, 
bid her open her heart, and then soothe and comfort her 
if she could. So she sat, very anxiously, alone in the 
drawing-room, not liking even to make inquiry of a serv- 
ant until the mistress reappeared. 

A sad sight Emily was. If pale before, she was now 
ghastly ; her eyes red, with black circles round them, as 
if she had been crying. And as she sat down, and took 
her coffee from the butler, trying to make some slight ob- 
servation to her visitor, her hands shook so much that 
she could hardly hold the cup. 


88 


Two Marriages. 

When the servants were gone there ensued a dead 
pause, at last broken only by Mrs. Knowle’s perplexed 
remark about its being a very fine evening for walking. 

“Would you like to walk on the shore? say if you 
would,” cried Emily, eagerly. “ I’m not strong enough 
myself, but my maid would accompany you ; and the 
gentlemen will not be out of the dining-room for hours.” 

“ I don’t want to go out and leave you alone, my dear,” 
said Mrs. Knowle, her very heart melting within her as 
she looked at the trembling hands, the pallid face, where 
two bright spots of carmine had now risen, one on either 
cheek, making the large eyes larger and more ‘ far-away’ 
than ever. She remembered, with a sudden spasm of 
memory, that pretty, round, merry, girlish face of Emily 
Kendal, when it first came into her house, and made a 
brightness in the dark rooms, and flitted like a sunbeam 
along the garden walks, especially on the Saturday and 
Sunday when John Stenhouse left his hard counting- 
house life and his dreary lodgings, and came to bask in 
Paradise there. 

“ My dear, I’ll not leave you alone,” said Mrs. Knowle. 
“ It isn’t good for you.” 

That soft motherly tone, the spell of womanly tender- 
ness, which no woman, married or single, happy or un- 
happy, is ever proof against, or ever ought to be, un- 
loosed the iron chain which bound the heart of poor 
Lady Bowerbank. She fell sobbing on Mrs. Knowle’s 
shoulder. 

“ I must speak to you — only let me speak to you — I 
shall die if I do not speak to somebody.” 

Tl;iat wa§ true. Judge her not harshly, you brave 


39 


Two Marriages. 

strong women, who can bear so much. Of course, her 
duty was silence — total silence, to shut her secret up in 
her heart, and never breathe to living soul what she had 
not dared to breathe to her own husband. But this duty, 
like a few more duties in her short, sad life, Emily had 
not strength to fulfill. She saw them all, clearly defined 
enough ; perhaps, if she had had any body beside her to 
help her to do them, they might, weak as her nature was, 
somehow or other have been done. But her only strength, 
her love, had been taken from her, and now her life was 
a mere fragment — a melancholy incompleteness, in which 
all aims and aspirations remained only such, and never 
developed into active perfection. Whether the course 
was right or wrong, dignified or undignified, it was quite 
true what she said, that she mmt give her confidence to 
some one — must speak out, or she would die. 

“Well, speak then, my poor child. Be assured I will 
never tell any body — I never did, you know.” (For just 
at the moment she had forgotten Mrs. Smiles, her only 
breach of confidence.) 

“Yes, you were very good to me once, and I — I 
haven’t forgotten it,” sobbed Emily. “ It was a terrible, 
terrible time ; I wonder I lived through it. But I think 
it has shortened my life. I shall never be an old woman 
— I feel that.” 

“Nonsense, my dear. What would Sir John say to 
such talk, I wonder?” 

Emily neither smiled nor sighed. “Sir John and I 
are very good friends — he is exceedingly kind to me. 
Do not suppose I have a shadow of complaint to make 
against my husband.” 


40 


Two Marriages. 


It was noticeable that she always called him “ my hus- 
band — Mr. Bowerbank,” and afterward “ Sir John.” As 
plain “John,” the fond familiar Christian name of other 
times, she never by any possible chance spoke either of 
him or to him. 

“ My dear, if you had any complaint to make, I’m not 
the woman to listen to it. Wives shouldn’t grumble 
against their husbands. ‘ For better for worse’ runs 
the Church service. If Edward had his little tantrums 
— which all men have, bless ’em ! — why, I’d bear them 
as long as I could, or a bit longer; if he grew bad, I’d 
try to mend him ; if he couldn’t be mended, but turned 
out such a villain that I actually despised him — why, I’d 
run away from him ! Ay, though he was my husband, 
I’m afraid I should run away from him. But I’d do it 
quietly, my dear, quietly. And I’d never abuse him to 
other folk. I’d just hold my tongue.” 

“ And I will hold mine — have I not done it hither- 
to?” gasped rather than spoke poor Emily. “I have a 
peaceful home — far peacefuler than Queen Anne Street 
ever was;” and she shuddered involuntarily. “I ought 
to be thankful for it, and I hope I am. He knows noth- 
ing — Sir John, I mean — and he never need know — he 
would not care. I owe him much kindness — I shall nev- 
er wrong him — that’s quite impossible. But” — here her 
feeble fingers clutched with the tightness of despair on 
Mrs. Knowle’s wrist, and she looked up at her imploring- 
ly — “you must do one thing for me. Promise me you 
will.” 

“I never make promises without telling Edward 
Knowle.” 


Two Marriages. v • 41 

“You may tell him — for it is he who must do it. He 
can manage it, and he will ; say, I entreat, he will.” 

“ What is it, my love?” And, though she spoke sooth- 
ingly, more than one anxious doubt crossed Mrs.Knowle’s 
mind; “Pray speak out.” 

“You heard what my husband said. Now your hus- 
band must manage, by an excuse he likes — even a lie if 
necessary — it will be a lawful lie — but he must manage 
it — that some one — you know who — does not come back 
to Liverpool.” 

“ I understand. You are quite right.” 

“ He must not come, I tell you,” and Emily’s voice 
grew shrill with something almost approaching fe^r. 
“ For I am a very weak woman ; I know that I have 
proved myself so more than once. I am safe, and I want 
to remain safe. I don’t love him, not now, not after he 
has forsaken me ; but oh ! for God’s sake keep him far 
away from me. Put the sea between us — hundreds, thou- 
sands of miles. Let me be quite sure that I shall never 
again see his face, or hear the sound of his voice, or his 
footsteps — you remember I used to know his step along 
the garden walk quite well. I must not see him — nev- 
er, nevermore!” 

“No, my dear; if I can help it you never shall,” said 
Mrs. Knowle, very firmly, as she held the shrinking, sob- 
bing creature in her arms, crying herself a little, and feel- 
ing very angry at somebody or something, she was not 
quite certain what. But she was certain of one thing, 
that there had been some great mystery, some heavy 
wrong-doing somewhere ; and though she was not exact- 
ly an inquisitive woman, she did like to get to the bot- 


42 


Two Marriages. 


tom of things, and still more did she dislike taking the 
responsibility of acting in the dark. 

“Will you tell me one thing, Lady Bowerbank?” asked 
she, when they both had grown a little calmer ; “ I don’t 
ask out of idle curiosity, but just that I and my husband, 
who were, and are still, his warm friends, may be placed 
in a right position toward him. My dear, just say, in two 
words, why you did not marry John Stenhouse.” 

“ Because he never asked me — that is, not the second 
time, as he promised. He promised, you know, solemnly 
— faithfully, that the day I came of age he would claim 
me, and we should be married.” 

“ With or without your father’s consent?” 

“Yes. He said it would be right, and he would do it. 
If he were alive, he told me, on my birthday, he should 
write or come to me. But he never wrote, and never 
came.” 

“ What a strange thing !” said Mrs. Knowle, much per- 
plexed. “ And yet I know — I am almost sure — ” 

She stopped, for in caressing the poor hand she had felt 
Lady Bowerbank’s wedding-ring — the fatal ring. With 
a sense of dread, lest one word might lay the foundation 
of harm that now could never be undone, no more than 
the marriage could be broken, she stopped, hesitated, and 
finally kept her own counsel. 

“ Oh, what a day it was — my birthday,” pursued Em- 
ily, pouring out her long-pent-up grief “ We were giv- 
ing a ball ; I did not wish it, but papa insisted ; however, 
I cared little about it, I was so happy. For when I 
woke in the morning I knew I should see him before 
night — I thought he would come rather than write, since 


43 


Two Marriages. 

he had not seen me for two whole years. I waited in, 
hour after hour, all that day ; and I danced myself sick 
at night, lest papa might notice I was unhappy. And 
then I lived on, hoping and hoping all next day, and all 
the day after — every day for a week. And for many 
weeks, post after post I watched, and day after day I 
never crossed the door-sill for an hour without coming in 
expecting to find his letter or his card. But he never 
wrote — he never came. And then I heard he had gone 
to India, and — and that was all.” 

Emily dropped her head, and the passing light and 
energy which had come into her features while speaking 
vanished out of them ; she sank back into the pale, pas- 
sive, quiet woman, John Bowerbank’s wife. 

“ Do you blame him ?” asked Mrs. Knowle, softly, with 
her head turned away. (“ For,” she owned afterward to 
her husband, “ I was frightened out of my life lest the 
poor girl should discover any thing in my manner that 
might set her asking questions.”) 

“ No, I don’t blame him. He had been so wronged, 
so insulted, no wonder his pride took up arms and he let 
me go : I was but a poor creature to fight for. Or per- 
haps he had found somebody else he liked better. Your 
Liverpool girls are so pretty, you know, and he always 
admired pretty people,” added Emily, with a feeble smile. 
“ I never was pretty myself ; and perhaps he might be 
afraid of people saying he married a plain girl for her 
money.” 

“ No,” cried Mrs. Knowle, indignantly, “ I’ll never be- 
lieve that. He wasn’t such a coward.” 

“ Well, well, whatever it was^ does not matter now 


44 


Two Marriages. 

He did not want me — did not care for me — and other 
people did, and my father was urging me perpetually to 
marry. I could not help myself — indeed I could not,” 
added she, clasping her hands together in a hopeless res- 
ignation. “ I was worn out — literally worn out and torn 
to pieces — and so I married Mr. Bowerbank.” 

There was a long silence, through which the large draw- 
ing-room clock kept ticking and ticking, with a remorse- 
less diligence, unvarying and unwearying as Time itself ; 
and through the open window, from across the now dark- 
ening river, came dim voices of sailors in ships slowly 
dropping down the Mersey, outward bound. 

At length Mrs. Knowle roused herself and said, 

“My dear, I am very glad you have trusted me to- 
night ; you shall never repent it. I quite agree with you 
that Mr. Stenhouse must not be asked to come back to 
Liverpool; Edward will manage it so as to satisfy Sir 
John. And after to-night, you and I will never name 
him again.” 

“No, no. That is,” and she hesitated — Emily’s pite- 
ous hesitation. 

But her friend had none. “ Decidedly not. Lady Bow- 
erbank. When a woman is once married, she has no 
right even to think of any man but her own husband. 
You know, Sir John is a very good, kind gentleman, and 
very fond of you. And you have many a blessing — 
and, for all you can tell, it may please God to send you 
one day a better blessing still.” 

Emily shook her head. 

“I know what you mean, but I don’t hope that. I 
don’t even wish it. I could not do my duty to a child. 


45 


Two Marriages. 

Better live on as I am living — just pleasing Sir John a 
little if I can — doing no harm to any body, and by-and- 
by my whole story will be over, and I myself, as some 
Scotch song says, 

‘“I myself in the auld kirk-yard, 

With the green grass growing over me.’ 

It’s curious,” she added, “ but sometimes in this mass of 
bricks and mortar, and these wastes of sea and sand, I 
feel an actual pleasure in the words ‘ green grass growing 
over me.’ ” 

“You are talking nonsense, my dear,” said Mrs. 
Knowle, sharply, though her tears were running down in 
showers ; “ you’ll live to be an old woman — as old, and 
as stout, and as comfortable as me.” 

“Do you think so? Well, I hope I may be half as 
good and as kind,” answered, with a grateful look, poor 
Lady Bowerbank. 

And then the lamps came in, and with them Sir John 
Bowerbank and Mr. Knowle, both in exceedingly cheer- 
ful spirits, having apparently settled quite to their satis- 
faction the knotty business point to arrange which they 
had dined together. Their respective wives bestirred 
themselves, as wives should, to welcome the advent of 
lords and masters, and after a lively half-hour the little 
quartette broke up. 

But when Mrs. Knowle, as her custom was, immediate- 
ly poured out to Mr. Knowle every thing that had passed 
in his absence, “ Edward,” who was a man of few words, 
looked exceedingly grave. 

“There has been foul play somewhere; I’m sure of 
that, wife.” 


46 


Two Marriages. 

“ Why — what do you know ?” 

“ John Stenhouse did ask her to marry him ; he went 
up to London on purpose, and was refused. He didn’t 
tell me much, but he let fall as much as that, or some- 
Jiing like it.” 

“ And you never told me ?” said Mrs. Knowle, a little 
Aggrieved. 

“ You were very ill, my dear ; and when you got bet 
ter he was gone to India. And somehow I wasn’t think- 
ing so much of him as of you. Kemember, you were 
nigh slipping away from me then, old woman.” 

She gave him a kiss — the placid, tender kiss of forty 
years’ accumulated content, and complained no more. 

“ Men don’t think so much of these things as we do. 
Poor Emily ! well for her she’s got a good man for her 
husband. But, for all that, as you say, my love, I’m cer- 
tain there has been foul play somewhere.” 


Two Marriages. 


47 


CHAPTER IV. 

De mortuis nil nisi honum. 

I would gladly put this as the motto to the present 
chapter, and adopt the moral of it, which is a noble and 
Christian moral, and can not be too tenderly and sedu- 
lously acted upon — in the main. But truth forbids si- 
lence sometimes — that truth, 

“The evil that men do lives after them ; 

The good is often interred with their bones 

which is as true now as when Shakspeare wrote it. Ho 
one, taking a wide and comprehensive view of life, can 
fail to see what fatal harm is sometimes caused, passively, 
by the passive dead; how often the living will injure 
themselves — and more than themselves — for the sake of 
what they call “ respect to the memory of the departed 
some one who, maybe, was once as foolish, obstinate, 
selfish, cruel as any of us, and in death has perpetuated 
the ill-doings of his life. From this feeling, corrupted 
from a virtue into a mere superstition, many a wrong, 
too late discovered, which ought, years and years before, 
to have been dragged to the open day, and crushed and 
trampled under the avenging heel of righteous wrath and 
noble scorn, is hushed up, suffered to be passed over un- 
requited, because — alas I the wrong-doers are now far 
away in the silent land, where, at least, they can injure 
no more. 


48 


Two Marriages. 


Nothing but good of the dead ! If good can not be 
spoken, then keep silence. 

Yes, ordinarily. God forbid that when He lays His 
eternal seal upon the quivering mouth of sinner as well 
as saint, ours likewise should not respect His awful man- 
date and be dumb. But there are cases in which silence 
regarding the dead involves wrong to the living, and 
that which might have been a solemn warning to many 
others left behind falls short of its natural lesson — the 
lesson I would fain have some worldly people lay to 
heart from this story — the true story, alas ! of John Bow- 
erbank’s wife. Though it happened long ago, and though 
place, people, and extraneous circumstances have been, I 
trust, effectually disguised, still the story itself is no in- 
vention, but a fact told to me ; and I tell it, after all the 
actors therein are safely dead and gone, as a lesson to 
those whom it may concern ; especially those who are 
supposed to need none, and yet fate often reads to them 
quietly the sharpest lesson of all — the parents of grown- 
up children. 

Lady Bowerbank was sitting quite alone, and dressed 
in deep mourning, in the dining-room of the house at 
Queen Anne Street. She had been summoned to Lon- 
don, for the first time since her marriage, by a very sad 
event — the sudden death of her father. He was not an 
old man exactly, and had been hitherto remarkably hale 
and active, living his life — the life of a barrister about 
town — with apparent enjoyment ; making, and spending 
as fast as he made, a very good income, absorbed chiefly 
in selfish pleasures, but pleasures of a perfectly reputable 
and unobjectionable kind. However, in the midst of 


Two Marriages. 


49 


these Death found and called him. Some hidden heart- 
disease suddenly developed itself, and he was struck 
down while making a speech in court. His daughter 
and son-in-law were telegraphed for, but even before the 
message reached them he was no more. They carried 
him back from Westminster Hall to his own door — a 
corpse. 

Of course, deep was the sympathy with his family ; 
and though since her marriage he had so withdrawn him- 
self from her that the slender filial relation which ever 
existed, or was likely to exist, between a loving girl and 
a man so essentially selfish, that except by force of the 
claim of Nature he had no right whatever to be consid- 
ered a father, had become all but nominal; still, over- 
powered by the suddenness of the stroke, his daughter 
mourned for him — mourned, remembering not so much 
later years as those early childish days when almost every 
man takes a certain pleasure in paternity, especially be- 
ing father to a pretty little girl. She recalled how he 
used to set her on the table after dinner and make her 
dance to him, or take her walks in the Park with her 
best clothes on — her muslin frocks, and blue ribbons, and 
her golden hair flying about, so that, infant as she was, 
she was fully aware every body noticed her, and asked 
“ Whose charming little girl that was?” Halcyon days 
these, during which many an imperfect nature and hard 
heart ride safely over the smooth waters of life, to be 
shipwrecked afterward. It is not till the storm comes 
that we find out the real building and timber of the vessel. 

After these days came others, in which, to the best of 
Emily’s recollection, her father had taken very little no- 


50 


Two Marriages. 

tice of her ; for nobody noticed her now v,ery mucb. She 
had ceased to be pretty ; her beauty was only the round 
rosiness of infancy, and it slipped away, and there had 
not yet come that beaming spiritual loveliness which had 
so charmed the unartistic eye, but clear head and sound 
heart of John Stenhouse. So she had been, during her 
teens, a good deal neglected ; and, in fact, her young life 
had only wakened up on that fatal Liverpool visit, the 
consequences of which turned the careless father into a 
remorseless judge — a cruel enemy. 

But she forgave him that ; she was ready to forgive 
him any thing, as she sat in his easy-chair, before his pri- 
vate desk, the papers of which Sir John, summoned back 
home immediately after the funeral, had left her to ex- 
amine alone ; she was haunted by sad thoughts of her 
father — her own poor father — who had so enjoyed the 
good things of this life — his cosy dining-room — his after- 
dinner repose — sleeping now, this first night, under- 
ground — the eternal sleep of death. She would have 
liked to think of him otherwise and otherwhere, but some- 
how she could not; he had been a man so essentially 
worldly that even after his death one’s fancy unconscious- 
ly associated him with this world. She knew she ought 
to dwell upon him as safe and happy in heaven, and yet 
her thoughts would fly back and back, like gloomy birds 
of evil omen, and settle in that cheerless, misty cemetery 
at Kensal Green — where. Sir John Bowerbank had said, 
some handsome memorial must immediately be erected 
to distinguish it from the throng of graves ; and he left 
his wife behind in London for a day, in order that she 
might leisurely examine her father’s papers, and find out 


51 


Two Marriages. 

whether the deceased — (it was melancholy to hear the 
clever barrister, the social diner-out, already spoken of 
as merely “ the deceased”) — had any particular wish re- 
garding his own monument; for Emily's husband was 
very kindly, very considerate, and in this last sad con- 
juncture she had been more drawn to him than for many 
months before. 

She had bidden him good-by an hour ago, he starting 
by the night-mail for Liverpool, and had settled herself 
alone in the large, desolate dining-room, making a sort of 
encampment by the fire, that she might feel less dreary. 
Then she began looking over — drawer by drawer, and 
paper after paper — the large desk which had been the 
awe of her childhood and the perplexity of her youth. 
She could hardly believe that it was really herself then 
peering into with unhallowed eyes, and turning over with 
unforbidden hands, those secrets of which we all have 
some, and which we think are safe from every body, till 
death comes and teaches differently. 

What Mr. Kendal could have been thinking of when 
he left all these matters — many of which he certainly 
would not have liked even his daughter to be acquainted 
with — to such a chance as now befell them, is impossible 
to say. Probably the truth, unseen and disbelieved, 
though it stares at us in church-yard and street, and 
whispers to us in every book or newspaper, that “ in the 
midst of life we are in death,” had been wholly unrecog- 
nized by this man of the world, or else he might have 
had a superstitious dread of setting his house in order, 
and contemplating, in any way, his own dissolution. Cer- 
tain it was he left no will, and his most private papers 


52 


Two Marriages. 


were found in the utmost confusion, every thing being 
exactly as he had quitted his home on the morning of 
his death, to return thither alive no more. 

With a solemn tenderness befitting such an office, his 
daughter turned over scrap after scrap, opened and looked 
at letter after letter, just reading as much as seemed nec- 
essary, and then burning it, or laying it aside to be burnt. 
A good many papers she destroyed at once ; she did not 
like even her husband to see them — these relics of a 
purely selfish life — not absolutely a wicked life, but one 
self-absorbed and self-enjoying — nothing but self-worship 
from the beginning to the end. 

Lady Bowerbank was growing weary; the hall clock 
and just struck eleven, resounding through the gloomy 
old house with a thrill that almost made her start off her 
chair — she was very feeble and nervous still, though her 
health had been of late months a little improving. Sick 
at heart, forlorn and lonely, she put aside heap after heap 
of letters in unfamiliar handwritings, to be examined by- 
and-by, when she suddenly came upon one that was — 
not unfamiliar. 

No wonder at its being there ; her father and Mr. Sten- 
house had had a sharp correspondence; probably this 
was one of the letters. None of them had ever been 
shown to her ; she had only found out accidentally that 
such had been sent and received. Eagerly she took up 
this one, then hesitated — Emily’s perpetual hesitation — as 
to whether it would be a breach of confidence or of duty 
to read it; when, looking at the envelope, she saw it was 
not addressed, as the rest of Mr. Stenhouse’s letters had 
been, to Mr. Knowle’s house in Liverpool, but to Queen 


53 


Two Marriages. 

Anne Street, London. And the post-mark bore a date 
long subsequent to that unhappy time ; a date which, as 
Emily Bowerbank gazed on, cold shivers of fear ran 
through her, for it was a week after her twenty -first birth- 
day. 

“ He did write, then. I must read it ! I must and will !” 
she said to herself ; and for once that firm “ I will” — the 
want of which had been the great lack of her life — as it 
is one of the greatest and most fatal deficiencies in any 
human life or character — came to her aid, and she carried 
out her purpose. Was it for good or for ill? Alas! 
the teller of this simple tale — and maybe many a reader 
— can not possibly decide ; except that, as a general rule, 
to have met open-eyed the most blinding truth is better, 
ay, and easier in the end, than to live under the blight- 
ing shadow of a permanent lie. 

The letter addressed to Mr. Kendal by John Stenhouse 
ran thus : 

“ Sir, — T hough we did not part amicably two years 
ago, I beg now to appeal to you as to a gentleman and a 
man of honor, and the father of the lady whom I then, 
and ever since, steadily determined to make my wife. 

“ At your desire, I abstained from all communication 
with her until she became of age, which was a week ago. 
On that day, and again for six days following, I called at 
your house, to see her and you, and to beg permission to 
renew our engagement — or rather to complete it ; for it 
has, as regards myself, never been broken ; but I was not 
admitted. I can not learn any thing about her. I have 
written to her ; I have watched — as far as a gentleman 


54 


Two Marriages. 


could presume to watch a lady — in the hope of seeing 
her, and all in vain. I now take the straightforward 
course of writing direct to you, sir. You may not like 
me, but you can know nothing against me. Also, you 
are a father. I entreat you for her sake — she did love 
me once — not to stand in the way of our happiness. 
That she is true to me I have not the slightest doubt. 
Tell me where she is, and when I may see her. 

“Yours faithfully, John Stenhouse.” 

Inclosed with this was a small note, scarcely more than 
a scrap, apparently written in haste, and blotted as it 
was folded ; 

“ SiK, — I accept your explicit and complete explana- 
tion, and wish your daughter every happiness that cir- 
cumstances may afford her. Neither she nor you will 
ever be again intruded upon by your obedient servant, 

“John Stenhouse.’' 

Emily Bowerbank read, and sat petrified. The whole 
world seemed fading away from her in a sort of dark 
gray mist. The roaring of waters was in her ears, and a 
dull knocking pain at her heart. Then all ceased, and 
she passed into temporary unconsciousness. 

When she came to herself she was lying forward with 
her head on the desk, the letter still grasped in her hand. 
She remembered at once what had happened, but she did 
not faint again, not even though she was one of those 
feeble women whom a very slight thing causes to fall 
into fainting-fits. 


65 


Two Marriages. 

A slight thing — as probably the father who had done 
it believed it to be, or argued himself into believing — 
and yet it was the destruction of two lives ! 

Emily gathered up her feeble thoughts and shattered 
senses together, and tried to understand the fact thus 
suddenly revealed to her. 

So, John Stenhouse had returned at the appointed 
time, and once again asked her to marry him. He had 
loved her, steadily, faithfully, through these twv> blank 
years. He had come up to London prepared to meet the 
sharp ordeal that was inevitably before him — the wound- 
ing of his pride — the lacerating of his feelings — all the 
humbling irritations that, under the best of circumstances, 
must be borne by a poor proud man who marries a rich 
man’s daughter. Yet he had come, willing and eager to 
marry her, setting aside every thing except his love for 
her — a love steady as a rock, true as steel. 

For an instant, as soon as this became clear to Emily’s 
half-bewildered brain, there flashed upon her a sudden 
light — the first and most natural impulse of actual joy. 
She clasped her hands together; and if ever the poor 
pale face looked like an angel’s, it looked so then. 

“ He was true ! He did not forsake me ! Oh, thank 
God!” 

And then she remembered all that followed, and how 
it had all ended in her being what she was now — John 
Bowerbank’s wife. 

The dead man had told a lie — or perhaps not a direct 
lie, but a misstatement — putting forward what he believed 
and hoped as what really existed. He had evidently in- 
formed John Stenhouse that his daughter no longer con- 


56 


Two Marriages. 

sidered herself engaged to him, and was on the point of 
marriage with John Bowerbank. Such fabrications are 
often given as facts by even good people, who hope them 
until they really believe them. The falsehoods of the 
wicked can be met — the misstatements of the respectable 
and worthy can not. 

“And a lie that is half a truth is ever the blackest of lies.” 

So Emily’s lover must have believed it, as was scarce- 
ly unnatural. But — the father? 

When one man has a grudge against another, it may 
be a small thing to deny him his house and suppress his 
letters ; and such may be, by some people, counted by no 
means an unwarrantable proceeding on the part of any 
father who wishes to prevent his daughter’s making an 
imprudent marriage. A little uncandid, perhaps ; a little 
like treating her as a child ; but then many young wom- 
en are little better than children ; and parents have, or 
are supposed to have, all the wisdom, the justice, the pru- 
dence on their side, and may take the law into their own 
hands, and use any means which they think advisable 
for the ultimate good of their offspring. How can they 
— the children — just entering on life, and with little or 
no experience of its countless pitfalls, know what is best 
for their own happiness? Blind obedience is safest and 
best. 

So would argue many excellent people — so doubtless 
would have argued the dead lawyer, could he have come 
back from his newly-filled grave, or from the place wher- 
ever it was, that his soul had fled to, and stood before his 
daughter in the dead of night, as she sat with that fatal 
letter still clutched in her hands, staring at vacancy. 


57 


Two Marriages. 

She was usually a good deal given to weeping — too 
much so, indeed — she was such a thorough woman in all 
her weaknesses, poor little Emily ! But now she did not 
weep at all ; neither did she rave, nor think any unholy, 
wicked thoughts, nor curse her father’s memory. He 
was dead, and she must not allow herself to dwell upon 
what he had done against her, or judge whether his act 
were right or wrong. She only felt that it had killed 
her. 

Yes, he had killed her, this respectable and respected 
father — had killed his own daughter — his natural flesh 
and blood — as completely as if he had slain her with his 
hand. It might be worth counting — as perhaps the good 
God may send His angels to count some time, when the 
secrets of all lives shall be revealed — how many fathers, 
perhaps some mothers — but women being less selfish 
than men, these are rarer — with the very best intentions, 
have done the same. 

He had killed her — killed the spring of youth and life 
within her, not merely by lawful open opposition — though 
that would have been cruel enough — but by a mean, un- 
derhand, cowardly blow, a side-thrust which there was 
no parrying. By him, worldly man as he was, probably 
the thing was not realized in its full enormity. How 
could he, or such as he, understand the loss of love — the 
one blessing which makes life sacred and beautiful ? Or 
perhaps he thought, like other worldly people, that world- 
ly blessings are all in all, and that he was actually doing 
his daughter a kindness in keeping her in the sphere she 
was born to ; saving her from sacrificing herself to a man 
of no wealth and no position, decidedly her inferior in 


58 


Two Marriages. 


the marriage barter, who, while she gave him every thing, 
had nothing on earth to offer her except love, which was 
a commodity of no weight at all with Mr. Kendal. 

Be that as it may, he had killed her. Of course, there 
is this to be said, why had she the weakness to let her- 
self be killed? Why did she take her lover’s loss so 
passively, and so unresistingly allow herself to be mar- 
ried to another? Why, in short, suffer herself to be 
made a mere victim to circumstances when she should 
have risen above them, as a strong, brave human being, 
whether woman or man, ought to do; fight her own 
battle, and assert her right to live out her own life in 
her own way, whether she married John Stenhouse or 
not? 

Alas, the question is answered by hundreds of victims 
—men and women, but especially women — to whose weak 
helplessness might has become right, and cowardice ap- 
peared like dutiful submission. Pass on, pale ghosts, 
sad shadows of lives that might have been made so hap- 
py and so fair : God will remember you, poor suffering 
ones! But how as to those who have caused you to 
suffer ? 

I think, if there ought to be a Gehenna upon earth — 
for mortal justice must not presume to create Gehennas 
afterward — it should be opened for the punishment of 
tyrants — domestic tyrants. 

Emily Bowerbank sat till day dawn without attempt- 
ing so much as to stir. Bewildering, delirious thoughts 
swept through her poor brain — she who was not much 
given to think, but only to feel. Whether she fully re- 
alized her own position — all she was and all she had lost ; 


59 


Two Marriages, 

whether, in those long still hours, she went over and 
over again, in maddened fancy, the contrast between 
her calm, cold, respectable marriage with honest John 
Bowerbank — (thank heaven, she felt he was not to blame ; 
he never could have known any thing) — and marriage 
with every pulse of her heart happy and at rest ; every 
aspiration of her soul satisfied ; her nature developed, and 
her mind strengthened ; fitted for weal or woe, labor or 
ease, peace or perplexity, as she would have been had she 
become the wife of John Stenhouse — all this was never 
revealed. 

She said nothing and did nothing; what was there to 
do or say ? She blamed no one, not even herself ; it was 
too late now. Every thing was too late. She felt in a 
vague, childish sort of way, like one of the “ foolish vir- 
gins,” whom she had always been so sorry for as a child ; 
her lamp, too, had gone out, and could never be relighted. 
The door of life was shut, not to be opened more. 

Till day dawned — the dreary, drizzly London day, she 
sat over her father’s desk, not attempting, however, to 
search farther, or to arrange any thing more. Then, with 
a sudden fear of the servants coming in and finding her 
there, she hurriedly swept all the letters into a drawer, 
all but the letter, which she took away with her — it con- 
cerned nobody but herself— and crept noiselessly away 
to bed. 

Next day, according to her husband’s desire. Lady 
Bowerbank started for Liverpool. It was well she did, 
for immediately on her reaching home she had a some- 
what severe illness, a kind of low gastric fever, which 
was rather prevalent at the time. No one wondered at 


60 


Two Marriages. 


it, and every body sympathized with her. “ Dear Lady 
Bowerbank!” they said, in talking her over, “she was 
such a delicate, tender creature ; and what a great shock 
it must have been for her, the death of her poor dear 
father 1” 


Two Marriages. 


61 


CHAPTER Y. 

People do break their hearts sometimes. Not very 
often, for a large proportion have really no hearts to 
break ; and a few who have them have also that stern pow- 
er of endurance, which, if they only have strength to live 
through the first shock, will enable them still to live on 
— live nobly, heroically, until they come to experience 
the mysterious internal force of reparation which Heaven 
has mercifully imparted to every sound body and health- 
ily constituted mind ; which turns evil into good, and 
transmutes dull misery into that active battling with 
sorrow which in time produces a deeper peace than even 
happiness. 

But here and there are others, like poor Emily Bower- 
bank, gifted with strong persistency of loving, and almost 
no other strength — no other persistence in any thing; 
sweet, gentle, sensitive souls; climbing plants, who, if 
they find a prop to cling to, bloom bounteously all their 
days ; but, finding no prop, or being rudely torn from it, 
slip silently to the earth, where they soon wither away, 
and have no use nor beauty in their lives ever after. 
This may not be noticeable outside ; the result may be 
attributed to many accidental external causes — worldly 
misfortune, constitutional feebleness, and so on, but the 
real cause is — their hearts are broken. Why it should 
be so — why, above all. Providence should allow it — 


62 


Two Marriages. 

should permit the gentle weak ones to succumb to the 
bad strong ones, and the virtuous to be sacrificed to the 
vicious — the unselfish and much-enduring to those who 
have neither tenderness nor generosity — is a mystery that 
never will be unraveled. We can only leave it with Him, 
who, dying, prayed to His Father, as Emily Bowerbank 
tried to pray to the Father in heaven, whenever she 
thought of her own father, “ Forgive them, they know 
not what they do.” 

Nevertheless her heart was broken, and she knew it. 
She recovered from her fever, and by degrees resumed 
almost her former place in her husband’s household, 
though not in general society ; she was quite incapable 
of that, and, besides, during her tedious convalescence. 
Sir John had got into a habit of going to his dinner- 
parties alone. She was, to all appearance, quite well; 
still she never again took a firm hold on life, never was 
heard to talk of the future, or to make any plans beyond 
the month, or the week, and then gradually — so gradu- 
ally that no one perceived it — not even beyond the day. 

She was not in a consumption, for the doctors found 
no disease in the lungs ; it was more what the country 
people call “ a waste” — that is, a gradual sinking of all 
the powers of the body, and sometimes even of the mind ; 
until mental griefs cease to wound, and of bodily suffer- 
ing, except weariness and feebleness, there is absolutely 
none. Not a painful death to die, especially when sur- 
rounded by all the luxuries that wealth or kindly care 
could bestow — every thing, in short, except the one thing 
— the one amulet of life, which had been taken away 
from her. 


63 


Txoo Marriages. 

People do not recognize half clearly enough the truth 
that God would not have created such a thing as mutual 
love, ending in marriage, had He not meant it to be the 
one thing needful— not absolutely to the salvation of a 
human soul, though it is that, or the contrary, oftener 
than we suspect, but to its perfect development, and, 
above all, to its happiness. Those who interfere with 
what is called “ a love affair” are doing what they nev- 
er can undo ; destroying what is impossible to rebuild ; 
taking away from two human beings that which no sub- 
stitute, be it family affection, wealth, worldly honor, or 
success, can avail to restore. All are valueless when love 
is not there. 

The sod lay green over Mr. Kendal’s bones; his life 
was over; but he had blighted two other lives — lives 
which might have blossomed into beauty, and carried 
their perfectness down into coming generations, when his 
poor selfish existence was forgotten in the dust. He had 
done it, and it never could be undone. 

What had become of John Stenhouse ? was a question 
that Mrs. Knowle often asked herself. Only to herself, 
however. Constantly as she visited Lady Bowerbank, 
and more especially since the sad illness which followed 
the sudden death of Mr. Kendal, his name had, since that 
first night, never once been breathed between them. It 
was impossible it could be, between any two honorable 
women. Nevertheless, the elder matron thought of him 
a deal more than she would have liked to own, and made 
many inquiries about him through her husband, but they 
all resulted in nothing beyond the fact that he was living 
and working somewhere in India. Mr. Knowle had con* 


64 Two Marriages. 

trived to prevent all offers being made to him of return- 
ing to England. 

Still, occasionally he was heard of, to Mrs. Knowle’s 
great satisfaction, though seeing that Emily made no in- 
quiries, her information was carefully kept to herself. 
But she took a romantic interest, most unworthy of such 
a very practical and sensible old matron, in the young 
man and his fortunes ; for she never ceased to believe, 
and asserted repeatedly to her husband, that so true a 
lover and so honest a man as John Stenhouse could never 
have forsaken a woman in this mean way ; and, though 
the real truth of the matter might never be discovered, 
she was as certain as she was of her existence that there 
had been something wrong somewhere. 

“And it may come right yet, who knows? I hope 
I’m not wicked — and it’s ill waiting barefoot for dead 
men’s shoes, but Sir John is over sixt}^, and he will have 
had a very fair enjoyment of life if he lives to eighty ; and 
poor Emily will not be much over forty -three even then. 
Folks do sometimes take the wrong person — become 
widows and widowers — and then meet their old loves 
and get married, and end their days happily together 
after all.” 

Mr. Knowle shook his gray head. 

“ It won’t be the case here, wife, so you need not think 
it.” 

He gave no more explanation, for he was not a talka- 
tive man, but his wife noticed that he often rode round 
two miles out of his way to business in order to inquire 
how Lady Bowerbank was that morning. And Mrs. 
Knowle, from paying a formal visit once in three months, 


65 


Two Marriages. 

got slowly into the habit of driving to Summer Lodge at 
least twice a week, and spending the morning with Em- 
ily. And by degrees she returned to the old tender fash- 
ion, and called her not “ Lady Bowerbank,” but “ Emily.” 

One morning the two ladies were sitting together, one 
working — for Mrs. Knowle’s fingers were never empty 
of work — and the other reading, or attempting to read, 
the newspaper. Newspapers were terribly interesting 
now in all houses, for it was j ust about the time of the 
Indian revolt, and, as this generation will long remember, 
far and near, there was scarcely a family who had not to 
mourn their dead. Lady Bowerbank, without giving any 
reasons for it — and indeed none were required, for the 
sympathy was too universal — had taken a deep interest 
in the tidings brought mail after mail, and, horrible as 
they often were, they were not forbidden her, for they 
seemed to rouse her out of herself to feel for afflictions 
compared to which her own were nothing. She also be- 
gan to exert herself and her small strength in a way that 
surprised both her husband and the doctors : gathering 
and making contributions in aid of the sufferers, and try- 
ing, in a feeble way, to organize schemes for their relief, 
and find out cases of exceeding need, which, by means of 
the large Indian connections of the house of Bowerbank 
and Co., was not difficult to accomplish. 

“ I should like to do a little good before I go,” she said 
one day, when Mrs. Knowle was urging her not to over- 
exert herself. “ I have done so little good in my life, 
you know.” 

And so they let her do it ; and she spent money, and 
time, and thought upon these melancholy charities, her 


66 


Two Marriages. 


husband grudging nothing; he never did. He was a 
very good man. Many a letter he wrote, investigating 
difficult cases, and many a time he drove out to lunch in 
the middle of the day — he that used never to take even a 
half-holiday from business — in order to tell his wife some 
piece of news, or ask how she was, or bring her some lit- 
tle delicacy from market or hothouse, if she chanced to 
be especially fanciful or feeble that day ; for she was very 
fanciful, as sickly people often are ; but she strove against 
it in a pathetic way ; and Mrs. Knowle noticed how inva- 
riably she tried to look grateful and pleased at Sir John’s 
little attentions, and to smile steadily as long as he re- 
mained in the room. 

“ I have really got a piece of news for you to-day, my 
dear,” said he, sitting down beside her, “ though it is not 
for you so much as for Mrs. Knowle — at least half for 
one and half for the other. You shall share the pleasure 
between you. Guess.” 

The two ladies tried, in all politeness, but failed signal- 
ly, both of them. 

“Well, then, first. Lady Bowerbank, it concerns you. 
That widow with three children — Mrs. Hamilton, you 
know, whose husband was shot at Bareilly, and who 
wrote you such a pretty letter of thanks — she is coming 
home by next mail.” 

“ With all her children, I hope ! Poor thing!” 

“ You need not say ‘ poor thing,’ for it is not only with 
her children — she brings a husband too.” 

“ Then he was not shot, after all ?” 

“Yes he was,” said Sir John. “But you women are 
curious creatures. This is her second husband. She 


Two Marriages. 


67 


has married the gentleman who saved her life and that 
of her three children, and brought her hundreds of miles 
across country and through indescribable perils. As she 
has not a halfpenny, and he is pretty well off, perhaps, 
poor woman ! she might have done worse. You will 
think so, Mrs. Knowle, for you know the person — our 
old clerk, John Stenhouse.” 

“ John Stenhouse ! Married !” exclaimed Mrs. Knowle ; 
as with an agitation she could hardly conceal, she glanced 
toward the sofa where Lady Bowerbank lay. But this 
tidings, which had powerfully affected the good lady her- 
self, seemed to have passed quite harmlessly over Emily. 
She scarcely turned or showed any sign of emotion be- 
yond a feeble fluttering of the fingers, which were soon 
stilled and folded upon one another over her heart — an 
involuntary attitude of hers, something like Chantrey’s 
figure of Resignation. 

“ Why on earth should not the young man be mar- 
ried ?” said Sir John, smiling. “ My dear lady, you look 
as vexed as if you had wanted to have him for your sec- 
ond! I must certainly tell Knowle of this. What do 
you say. Lady Bowerbank ?” 

Lady Bowerbank said quietly, “ I think people should 
always marry whoever they choose, and that nobody 
should blame or criticise them for it. Nobody but them- 
selves can know the whole circumstances.” 

“ Quite right. You are a sensible woman, Emily,” said 
the old man, looking tenderly at his young wife, who yet 
seemed so much nearer the other world than he. “ Well, 
I must go back now, for I am full of business. You’ll 
wait here to dinner, Mrs. Knowle ?” 


68 


Two Marriages. 

Mrs. Knowle muttered some excuse concerning “ Ed- 
ward.” She looked exceedingly nervous and uncomfort- 
able still. 

“ Well, do as you like. Only stay as long as you can 
— stay and grumble at your friend Stenhouse and his 
marriage. By-the-by, I think I shall write to meet them 
at Southampton ; it would only be civil, and I liked 
Stenhouse. What shall I give him — your good wishes?” 

“ If you please.” 

“ And mine,” said Emily, half raising herself from the 
sofa. “I knew him once — we met at Mrs. Knowle’s. 
He will remember me — Emily Kendal.” 

“ Very well, my dear.” 

After Sir John was gone, Mrs. Knowle took her friend’s 
hand in hers and held it, but she did not attempt to 
speak; she literally did not know what to say. Lady 
Bowerbank’s manner, so gentle, so composed, had com- 
pletely puzzled, nay, frightened her. She could not be- 
lieve it natural. But it was natural ; there was no affect- 
ation of strength about it, no high heroic self-suppres- 
sion. Emily lay, pale indeed, but not paler than usual, 
her eyes open, and fixed with a soft, steady gaze on the 
white spring clouds that sailed in mountainous masses 
across the dark blue sky ; great heights and depths of 
heaven, into which the soul, when it is loosely held to 
earth, seems to pierce with an intense and yet calm de- 
sire, that soothes all pain, and makes every thing level 
and at rest. 

“ I am glad of this — very glad,” she said, after a long 
pause, and without any explanation. “ He ought to be 
married, and he will be sure to make a good, kind hus' 


Ttjoo Marriages. 69 

band to whomever he chooses for his wife ; and no doubt 
he has chosen wisely and well.” 

“ I hope he has,” said Mrs. Knowle, rather tartly. She 
was but human, and she did not like the destruction of 
her little romance. 

“I am sure of it. The man who could love one wom- 
an so faithfully as he once loved me — ” 

Mrs. Knowle turned round eagerly. 

Emily colored, even through the paleness of mortal 
disease. “ Yes, it was so. He was never untrue to me. 
I can’t tell you any particulars, and I never found it 
out myself till a little while ago. But he did come back, 
to the very day, and claimed me. Only — I was never 
told.” 

“And whose doing was that?” 

“ My father’s.” 

Mrs. Knowle almost started from her chair. “ What 
an atrocious — ” 

“ Hush ! it is too late now. And, besides, it might 
have come to the same thing in the end. Feel here!” 
and she took Mrs. Knowle’s hand and put it to her heart, 
which was beating violently and irregularly. “ He does 
not know it — my good husband I mean. Was he not 
good to me this morning? Nobody knows it, I think. 
But I know it,” and she smiled. “I am quite certain — 
safely certain — that I am dying.” 

“Don’t say that. You must not — you ought not.” 
And Mrs. Knowle tried a little to reason her out of that 
conviction, which seemed to be the source of all her 
strength, and the soothing of all her sorrows. 

— no. This \70rid has been a little too hard 


70 


Two Marriages. 


for me,” Emily said; “but in the other I may begin 
again, and be strong. Do you think he has forgiven 
me?” 

“ Who, my poor child ?” 

“John Stenhouse. You see, I might have obeyed my 
father, and not married him; but then I ought not to 
have married at all. Nobody ought, loving another per- 
son all the time. But I was so weak — and — Never 
mind. It does not matter much now.” 

“ John has married, you see,” said Mrs. Knowle, partly 
with a lurking sense of indignation at him, and partly 
from a vague feeling that even now it was her duty to 
impress that fact salutarily upon Sir John Bowerbank’s 
wife. Both the wrath and the caution passed harmlessly 
over the gentle spirit, that was already loosing its cables 
from earthly shores, and feeling soft, pure airs blowing 
toward it from the land unseen. 

“Yes, he has married ; I can quite understand how it 
came about: just the sort of marriage he would be sure 
to make — of pity, and tenderness, and duty. And it may 
turn out a very happy one. He will love her very much 
when — when I am quite gone away. I hope she is a 
good woman.” 

“ I hope so,” said Mrs. Knowle, rather huskily. 

“ Would you mind trying to find out? I don’t mean 
that I am ever likely to have any acquaintance with 
them, but I should like to know about him and her. 
And something about her three children too. He will 
have to work hard to maintain so large a family.” 

“Very hard.” 

It was strange how the two women seemed to have 


Two Marriages. 71 

changed places. Emily talked, Mrs. Knowle was all but 
silent. 

“You are sure you don’t mind making these inqui- 
ries? Or I would ask my husband. Yes, perhaps, after 
all, it will be better to ask my husband. He might be- 
friend them very much, and I am sure he would like to 
do it.’^ 

“ In the way he once wanted — by getting John Sten- 
house into the firm again ? Do you mean that ? and do 
you wish it, Emily ?” 

“ No, not wish it exactly. But” — and she opened her 
eyes wide, clear, and pure — pure alike with the inno- 
cence of sorrow and the peace of coming death, and fixed 
them steadily on Mrs. Knowle’s face — “I should not be 
afraid of his coming to Liverpool — not now.” 

Mrs. Knowle fairly laid her head on the sofa pillow 
and sobbed. Then she rose up, saying in a cheerful 
voice, 

“Well, my dear, I have staid talking quite long enough 
for one day, so good-by. I’ll keep a look-out after the 
Stenhouses. Meantime lie down and get a sleep if you 
can, and take care to be quite bright by the time Sir 
John comes in to dinner.” 

“ Oh yes, I always try to do that. I like to please 
him. He is very good to me,” said Emily Bowerbank. 


72 


Two Marriages, 


CHAPTER VI. 

Lady Bowerbank was, as she said, dying; that is, 
the seeds of death were firmly sown in her constitution, 
but they were very slow of developing themselves. Per- 
haps the exceeding peace in which, externally, her daily 
life was passed, partly caused this ; but chiefly it was be- 
cause, if she had seen an end to happiness, so she had to 
all its bitterest elements, its turmoil, trial, restlessness, 
and pain. She was not strong enough to suffer, and now 
she had ceased to suffer any more. She even seemed for 
a while to rally, and to take an interest in things about 
her — the tender, farewell interest of one soon departing. 
She was especially sedulous in all duties to her husband 
— at least those which she was able to perform. But she 
had long sunk into a thorough invalid wife, most kindly 
watched and tended, though more by his orders than by 
his personal care, while he went his own ways, and fell 
back gradually into much of his old “ bachelor” life, as 
it had been spent in the long interregnum between his 
first marriage and his union with poor Emily Kendal. 

“ Sir John is quite comfortable : he will not miss me 
very much,” Mrs. Knowle once heard her say, more med- 
itatively than complainingly. But that lady, who had 
so keen a sense of wifely duty, even without love, never 
took any notice of the remark. 


73 


Two Marriages. 

And when, according to promise, she had learnt all at- 
tainable facts about the Stenhouses — how that they lived 
in London, on Mr. Stenhouse’s not too large salary in a 
merchant’s office, and he was reported to be a most kind 
husband to the widow, and a careful father to the three 
fatherless children — after this, the prudent matron said 
as little as possible to Lady Bowerbank on the subject 
of her old lover. 

Only once, when, after as long an interval as it was 
possible for civility to admit of, Mr. Stenhouse answered 
the congratulations he had received on his marriage in a 
letter to Mrs. Knowle, containing the brief message — 
“ his own and his wife’s compliments, and thanks to Sir 
John and Lady Bowerbank” — Emily’s eyes filled with 
tears. 

“ He might have been a little kinder,” she said. “ But 
he does not know, and he can not forgive. He never 
will forgive me — till I die.” 

And meantime the two, once lovers, lived on, and did 
their duty to the husband and the wife unto whom Fate 
had united them. Whether bitter thoughts ever came — 
whether in the dead of night either woke up and remem- 
bered the past, their young, bright, innocent mutual love, 
and the cruelty that snatched it from them and turned it 
into a curse; whether their hearts ever burned within 
them against man, or, alas! against Providence, because 
in this short, short mortal life they were not made happy 
— they whose happiness would have injured no one, and 
who needed nothing in the world to make them happy 
except a little love — these were mysteries which must re* 
main forever undisclosed. 


74 


Two Marriages. 


But month by month there was disclosed the plain sad 
fact that Sir John Bowerbank’s second marriage was not 
likely to be of much longer duration than his first one, 
which most people had altogether forgotten ; and much 
was the sympathy excited both for him and for the sweet, 
fragile creature who was fading away, peacefully and 
contentedly, it was evident, but still fading, no one quite 
knew how or why. All the Liverpool doctors, and more 
than one London physician, were brought to his wife by 
Sir John, in undemonstrative but evident anxiety ; but 
they could not cure her — they could not even find out 
what was the matter with her. Hereditary weakness, 
want of stamina, deficiency of vital force — they called her 
disease, or no disease, by all these fine names; but no 
human being guessed the root of it except Mrs. Knowle. 

She, honest woman, as she sat knitting beside her 
“ Edward,” who was getting an old man now — stout, and 
a little infirm with rheumatism, and sometimes a little 
cross too with the weight of business, but still at heart 
the same hearty, kindly “ goodman” as ever — would oft- 
en say with a sigh, “ Ah, poor Emily ! if those two had 
only been left to fight the battle out together as we did, 
my dear, how much better it would have been !” 

At which Mr. Knowle, who never sentimentalized in 
his life, just assented, smiled at his “old woman,” and 
perhaps a little weary of the subject, generally went to 
sleep. 

How the Stenhouses struggled on, for it must have 
been a struggle at best, with their small income and the 
three children, Mrs. Knowle could not easily learn ; John 
Stenhouse seemed determined to drop entirely out of the 


75 


Two Marriages. 

range of his old Liverpool friends. To any letters — and 
Mrs. Knowle wrote him several — he always returned po- 
lite, but long-delayed and unsatisfactory answers, telling 
her nothing that she wished to know, and inquiring of 
nothing which, she hardly knew why, she would have 
liked him to inquire about. 

“ And there is that poor thing dying, and he does not 
even know it !” lamented she sometimes. To which her 
husband only answered with the common-sense question, 

“ And what would be the good of it if he did know ?” 

Nor on her side was Emily aware — and Mrs. Knowle 
took care to keep it from her, lest it might disturb her 
peaceful dying — that his struggle was the equally hard 
struggle of living : grinding poverty ; a delicate, nerv- 
ous, broken-spirited wife; three hungry children to be 
fed, from duty, without the natural fatherly love to 
sweeten it ; and, above all, the daily blank in the life of 
a strong, faithful, single-hearted man, who, having once 
taken it into his head, or heart, to love one woman, never 
can learn to unlove her to the end of his days. Such 
men there are, but they are very, very rare, and John 
Stenhouse happened to be one of them. 

So he locked his secret up in his breast, and, whether 
or not his marriage was a happy one, went on working 
steadily and patiently for his wife and for the children, 
not his own, whom Providence had sent to him. He 
slipped away from all his old associates, till even Mr. and 
Mrs. Knowle were half inclined to do as he apparently 
wished, and let him go. 

But the one person who, with an almost fateful perti- 
nacity, held to him, was Sir John Bowerbank. Whether 


76 


Two Marriages, 


he, too, was the sort of person who, once taking a liking, 
great or small, never relinquishes it, or whether some 
other secret inner sympathy attracted him to young Sten- 
house, as being not unlike what he himself had been as 
a young man, certain it was that the head of the firm 
never lost sight of his former clerk ; and when, on Mr. 
Knowle’s suggesting the advisability of a junior partner, 
the question arose who should be adopted into such a 
valuable and responsible situation, the first person Sir 
John proposed to whom the offer should be made was 
Mr. Stenhouse. 

Edward Knowle was greatly amazed — nay, perplexed. 
He rubbed up his hair with a troubled aspect. 

“Stop a bit; I think — I think I should like to speak 
to my wife about this.” 

Sir John looked undisguised surprise. “ As you please. 
But it never would occur to me to consult my wife on 
business matters.” 

“ Indeed !” said the other, catching eagerly at the op- 
portunity, “ I wish you would. I really think you had 
better — in this matter.” 

“Why?” 

“ You see,” awkwardly explained Mr. Knowle, “ a 
partner, which also implies a partner’s wife, is a serious 
thing to the women-kind, bringing about much intimacy, 
and all that. I fancy — of course it’s only a fancy of mine 
— that the ladies would both like to be consulted about 
it. Shall my wife go and speak to Lady Bowerbank ?” 

“ If she chooses ; but it is really great nonsense bring- 
ing domestic affairs into a mere question of business. It 
will cause delay, while every post is a n^atter of corpse- 


77 


Two Marriages. 

quence. I can not see the use of it at all. In fact, with 
your consent — ” and his manner implied with or without 
it, for Sir John Bowerbank was a very obstinate man in 
his way, as was well known to his partner — “ with your 
consent, I shall write and make the offer to the young 
man to-night.” 

He did so, and it was declined — declined immediately 
and point-blank, without any reasons being assigned for 
the refusal. 

Sir John was considerably annoyed. To the answer, 
which had come, not by letter, but by telegram, so eager 
apparently was the young man to renounce the proffered 
kindness, he wrote again, suggesting easier terms — terms 
so favorable that no man in his senses seemed likely to 
refuse them, and yet by return of post refused they were. 

“ The man must be mad,” said Sir John to his partner. 

“Perhaps,” was the brief reply. 

“ Why, he has three children and a delicate wife, and 
scarcely enough salary to keep them in bread and cheese ; 
for you know, at Lady Bowerbank’s desire, I found out 
all about them. She was interested in the wife, and 
might write and advise her to persuade her husband out 
of his folly. I must speak to Lady Bowerbank.” 

Meantime Lady Bowerbank had been spoken to. In 
fear and trembling the matter had been broken to her by 
good Mrs. Knowle ; but there was no need for uneasi- 
ness; Emily evinced not the slightest sign of agitation. 
She merely said that she thought such a partnership 
would be the best thing possible, both for the firm and 
for Mr. Stenhouse, and that she hoped it would come 
about speedily. And then she lay looking into the sum 


78 Two Marriages. 

set over the sea, with a strange, soft expression in hei 
eyes. 

“ You are sure — quite sure, my dear Emily, that you 
have no objection ?” 

“No; why should I?” And she added again still 
more earnestly, “ Oh no — not now.” 

“ And by that,” commented Mrs. Knowle, as she re- 
peated the conversation to her husband, “ I am certain 
Emily feels that she is dying.” 

They talked the whole matter over for a while, con- 
jugally and confidentially, in their own room, for they 
had been asked to dine and sleep that night at Summer 
Lodge, as indeed they very often were now, and then 
went back to the drawing-room. 

There, white indeed as a dying face, but eager with all 
the strength of life, lay poor Emily, her husband sitting 
beside her sofa in his quiet, attentive, elderly way, and 
trying, as well as he could, to make little bits of talk, 
concerning the news of the day in Liverpool, to amuse 
her during the hour and a half that he and his guests 
dined, and she rested alone, for she had now ceased en- 
tirely to join the circle at meals. 

“ Come here, Mrs. Knowle, and say if you do not agree 
with me — ^you women understand one another so well. 
I have been telling my wife about that young man’s ex- 
ceeding folly — your friend Stenhouse, I mean — in refus- 
ing to enter our firm. It must be a mere crotchet — some 
offense taken, or the like, for which we can’t afford to 
lose such a useful partner, or to let a fine young fellow 
cut his own throat in that way. I want Lady Bower- 
bank to write to his wife, and reason with her. She has 


Two Marriages, 79 

a right ; for Lady Bowerbank has done all sorts of kind 
things to Mrs. Stenhouse.” 

“ Kindness implies no right,” said Emily, hastily and 
tremulously. “I don’t know her. I can not write to 
her. What could I say ?” 

“Just a little common sense — that such a chance as 
this does not happen to a man twice in a lifetime, that 
Sten house should take advantage of it. He is very poor. 
I hear he can but just put bread into the mouths of those 
three children. If he were to join us he would make his 
fortune.” 

“ Make his fortune,” repeated Emily, wistfully. “ Ah 1 
if that had been — once. But it is too late now.” 

“ Too late, my dear ! Nonsense. The young man can 
not be over thirty yet.” 

“ Thirty -one and a half.” 

Sir John Bowerbank looked exceedingly surprised for 
the moment. “ I forgot — you said you knew him.” 

“Yes, I did know him, as Mrs. Knowle is aware. I 
met him at her house. I was once going to be married 
to him. He was very fond of me.” 

Quite quietly, without the slightest sign of emotion, 
Emily said these words, as if it had been a fact commu- 
nicated concerning a third person ; so utterly divided 
from the world and the passions of it seemed that frail 
creature, who already stood close on the portals of the 
world to come. 

“ Shall I go away ?” whispered Mrs. Knowle, and yet 
she dreaded to do it, for there was something so unearth- 
ly in Emily’s expression just then. 

“Oh no, do not leave me. You can tell my husband 


80 


Two Marriages. 

any thing he wishes to know. Dear husband! you are 
not angry with me? You know I was a poor weak thing 
always, and now all will soon be over. It is far the best 
— far the best.” 

“ I do not understand,” said, with a distressed air. Sir 
John Bowerbank. 

No, he did not ; it was not in him to understand. And 
when, in few words, for her breath was short and her 
strength small, she told him all the story — not that she 
had married him without loving him, for this he knew 
from the first ; but that she had loved another, from 
whom she had been so cruelly separated ; that from that 
day her poor young life had withered up at its very roots; 
still, still the worthy man seemed as if he could not un- 
derstand. He was sixty years old, and the tale belonged 
to youth and love ; to a time which, if he had ever known, 
had now entirely passed away even from his remembrance. 
He just looked perplexed, and a little sorry, and patted, 
with a soothing gesture, the wasted hands that were held 
out to him entreatingly. 

“ Do not excite yourself — pray do not, my dear 1 It is 
so very bad for you. Just tell me what you wish, and 
I will try to do it.” 

“ And you are not angry ?” 

“ About this young man ? No, no. Of course, it was 
a great pity, but the thing happens every day. Don’t 
fret about it, Emily. You are very comfortable as you 
are — at least I hope so.” 

“ Yes,” said Emily ; and her tears ceased, and her quiv- 
ering features settled into composure. No, he could not 
understand — this good, kindly-meaning, elderly man, no 


Two Marriages. 


81 


more than the tens of thousands of respectable men and 
women of this world ever do understand — the full mean- 
ing of Love. Love, happy or unhappy, mutual or unre- 
turned, perfect or unfulfilled, but still real, true, heart- 
warm love, which is a gift direct from Love divine, and 
which ever to know, or to have known, is a blessing which 
fills a whole lifetime. 

“ You perceive now. Sir John,” said Lady Bowerbank, 
laying over his her shrunken hand, where the wedding- 
ring hung as loosely as the great hoop of diamonds that 
guarded it, “ you perceive why Mr. Stenhouse is so insens- 
ible to all your kindness. He thinks himself wronged, 
and he was wronged — cruelly. He was made to believe 
one thing and I another, and so we were parted. Please 
tell my husband how it was, Mrs. Knowle, “ I have no 
strength for speaking much.” 

“Don’t speak at all, for where is the good of it?” said 
Sir John, who evidently disliked the discussion of the 
matter. “Things can’t be mended now, my dear! He 
has got a wife and you a husband. So, even if I were 
to die, it would be of no use. You could not marry 
him.” 

“ I was not thinking of marrying, but of dying. Hus- 
band, I am certain I am dying ; and it is hard to die with- 
out his having forgiven me, for he was a good man, and 
he was terribly wronged. Often — often I thought of ask- 
ing you, but I had not courage. How I have. Will 
you do one thing for me ?” 

“What, my dear?” 

“ Let me see John Stenhouse again — for one half hour 
' — just one ten minutes — before I die !” 


82 


Two Marriages. 


“ Don’t talk of dying ; you will live many years yet, 
I trust,” said Sir John, earnestly. 

Emily shook her head. 

“ Ah ! you know better than that. And I would not 
ask such a kindness unless I were dying. It is not 
wrong ; surely you do not think so ?” added she, implor- 
ingly. “I only want to tell him the truth; that it was 
not I who deceived him ; I want to save him — he is a 
good man, you know — from having his whole life em- 
bittered and his future injured by thinking of me as a 
wicked, faithless woman, who first jilted him, and then let 
her rich husband insult him by showing him kindness. 
The truth would set all right — just three words of honest, 
simple truth. Husband, may I see him ? Mrs. Knowle, 
speak for me, please.” 

“I really think your wife is right. Sir John,” said 
plain-speaking Mrs. Knowle. 

“Very well. Settle it among yourselves, you women- 
kind !” answered Sir John, as he rose up. “ Only take 
care that Lady Bowerbank does not overexert herself.” 

“Thank you,” breathed rather than spoke the poor 
girl ; in her excessive fragileness, she seemed wasting 
back into thin girlhood again. “ And you will forgive 
me, because I can not either harm you or grieve you 
much ; I shall be dead so very soon — quietly dead, you 
know, as your first wife is, whom you never talked to 
me about. I wish you had, now and then. Were you 
very fond of her ? And I dare say she was very fond 
of you?” 

The old man suddenly sat down again, covering his 
eyes with his hand. 


Two Marriages. 


83 


“Don’t mention her, please. Poor little Jane — my 
Janie. She loved me.” 

And as he sat beside the wife of his prosperous later 
days, who, whether living or dying, only coldly esteemed 
him, and was grateful to him, perhaps the old man’s 
thoughts went back, with a sudden leap of memory, to 
the wife of his youth and his poverty, so fond, so simple, 
so tender, and so true. When he took his hand away 
there were traces of tears on the withered cheeks, and he 
rose hastily to depart. 

“Well, my dear, we need speak no more on this mat- 
ter. You can see Mr. Stenhouse whenever you like, and 
if you can persuade him to enter our firm, so much the 
better. Impress upon him that capital is of no moment ; 
a young, active, business-like man is the one thing need- 
ed, both by Mr. Knowle and myself Isn’t it so, Mrs. 
Knowle? You’ll write the letter, perhaps? And you 
will take good care of my wife here, and not let her 
mope, eh ?” 

“I will, Sir John.” 

“ Good afternoon, then.” 

And he went away, leaving the women alone. 


84 


Two Marriages, 


CHAPTER YIL 

What John Stenhouse said to his wife when he got 
Mrs. Knowle’s letter — a very brief, simple letter, dictated 
by Lady Bowerbank at her bedside, and merely stating 
that she wished to see her old friend again, as she did 
not think she was long for this world — what he said or 
what he felt, this history can not tell. He was not a man 
likely to have confided much of his own previous histo- 
ry to his wife, nor, when Mrs. Knowle afterward saw the 
lady, did that acute matron think her a person likely to 
have evinced much interest concerning her husband’s 
early fortunes or lost love — a nice, pretty - faced, gentle 
creature, languid, and a little uninteresting, besides being 
a little lazy, as Indian ladies are apt to be. Doubtless 
the marriage had grown, as so many marriages do grow, 
out of mere circumstances, and after it the husband had 
gone back very much to his own old life — the life of ac- 
tion, or business, or, at best, of general kindly benevolence 
— a life in which his wife took little part, or, indeed, was 
capable of taking it. 

When John Stenhouse visited Liverpool — for, after 
showing the letter to Mrs. Stenhouse, in whom it did not 
excite the least curiosity, he started North at once, every 
one of his old acquaintance, especially the Knowles, no- 
dced a visible change in him — a certain hardness, reti- 
cence, and self-containedness, deeper than even the reserve 


85 


Two Marriages. 

of his bachelor days — as if the man had withdrawn into 
himself, went his own ways, and carried out his own life 
with a grave and sad independence. He spoke of his 
home and of his wife with a careful tenderness, but his 
eye did not moisten nor his face kindle when naming 
either, and there was nothing of that total change from 
frosty coldness to sunshiny warmth which is often seen 
in the looks and manner of a man who marries ever so 
late in life, if he marries with all his heart in the union. 
In this man’s heart, good and true as it was, and would 
always remain, faithful till death, for honor’s and con- 
science sake, to the woman he had taken to himself, still, 
as any one who knew the difference could plainly see, 
and as Edward and Emma Knowle saw at a glance, the 
sacred marriage torch, ever burning yet ever uncon- 
sumed, had never really been lighted — never would be. 

But Stenhouse had been always a silent and undemon- 
strative man ; and his experience abroad had made him 
more so, and more sedulous than even in his youth over 
the keeping up of all outward observances. Even when 
he sat listening to Mrs. Knowle’s account of Lady Bower- 
bank’s failing health and the hopelessness of her recov- 
ery, and again to that other story, which it had been ar- 
ranged she should tell him, and not Emily, of the cir- 
cumstances of her marriage to Sir John, and the letter 
found in Mr. Kendal’s desk afterward, he exhibited out- 
wardly nothing more than a sad gravity ; in fact, he hard- 
ly spoke six consecutive words. 

“ So like a man !” cried Mrs. Knowle, half bitterly, 
when she was retailing the conversation to her husband. 

“I think it was like a man,” said honest Edward 


86 


Two Marriages. 

Knowle ; and his wife, woman as she was, quick, impul- 
sive, and hard to believe in what she did not clearly see, 
recognized dimly what her husband meant. She respect- 
ed, and in years to come learned daily to respect more, 
the manly endurance which, beholding the absolute and 
inevitable, accepts it, and, whatever the man suffers, 
makes no sign. 

“ Thank you,” Mr. Stenhouse had said, holding out his 
hand to Mrs. Knowle, “ thank you for all your kindness ; 
to me myself — and — to her ! Is she able to see me ? If 
so, had we not better go at once ?” 

Mrs. Knowle ordered the carriage, and they drove across 
country — the miles upon miles of flat country which 
mark the Liverpool shore — a long level of roads, fields, 
and hedges — hedges, fields, and roads — sometimes green, 
perhaps, and not ugly, but tame and uninteresting as a 
loveless life — as the life which had been meted out to 
these two human creatures, who, left to their own holy 
instincts, would have met and mingled together, and 
flowed on harmoniously as one perfect existence. Now ? 

Mr. Stenhouse and Mrs. Knowle conversed very little 
during their drive, and then not concerning any thing of 
the past. Only once, with unnecessary caution, Mrs. 
Knowle screwed up her courage to its utmost pitch and 
said, 

“ Perhaps it would be better if you did not speak to 
Emily about her father.” John Stenhouse’s face turned 
purple-red, and his eyes flamed. 

“ No, I will remember he is dead — dead.” And within 
a minute or two he said — the bitterest thing he ever was 
known to say — “ Mrs. Knowle, my father died a month 


87 


Two Marriages. 

before I was born, and my mother seven years afterward. 
Perhaps it’s true what a cynical friend of mine used to 
declare, ‘ that when he chose a wife, he would take care 
she was a miserable orphan.’ ” 

But they were reaching the door, where scarcely any 
visitors now entered except good Mrs. Knowle. Soon 
they passed through the splendid empty house, where 
the mistress had been missing so long that her absence 
was scarcely noticed. The large, handsome drawing- 
room was just as bright, even though the sofa in the 
corner where Emily used to lie was vacated, and had 
been for some days. She now occupied a small room 
much quieter and farther removed, which had been hast- 
ily fitted up for her comfort. In a few days more she 
would vanish even from that into her own chamber and 
bed, never to be carried thence till carried away in that 
narrow couch of eternal rest where we all shall be laid 
some day. And that day was not very far off now to 
the weary soul and worn-out body of Emily Bowerbank. 
As she said many a time, life had been too hard for her ; 
she was glad to go to sleep. 

When the strong, hearty, healthy man, still young in 
years, and with all his life before him, passed out of the 
bright, cheerful drawing-room, full of all human sights 
and sounds — rich furniture, the scent of exotics, and the 
shrill note of cage -birds singing — to that small inner 
chamber where the light was subdued, and there was a 
faint, oppressive perfume to make up for the lack of fresh 
air; while a sedate old woman, the nurse of Emily’s child- 
ish days, sat sewing at the window, but turning every 
minute at the slightest cough or movement of the almost 


88 


Two Marriages. 

motionless figure on the sofa, John Stenhouse drew back 
involuntarily. He had not realized till now all that he 
had lost — all that he was losing. Though he had been 
told it over and over again, he never really recognized 
that the woman he once loved so passionately — the pret- 
ty bright girl, with her rosy cheeks, her laughing eyes, 
and her heart full of the fondest, most innocent love, was 
dying. 

He was married now — another woman owned his duty, 
and possessed a great deal of the tenderness that no hon- 
orable man can fail to give to a creature so utterly de- 
pendent on him as a wife is — but Emily Kendal had been 
his first love. All the memories of it, and of her, rushed 
upon him with an agony irrepressible. He grasped Mrs. 
Knowle by the arm as she was going into the sick-room. 

“Wait a minute — stay! — say I’ll come presently.” 

And he rushed away, right down the staircase, and 
through the first open door — for it was high summer, and 
the air was full of sunshine and of roses — into the garden. 

It was half an hour before he returned, which gave 
time for them to meet, as alone was possible these two 
could meet — as old friends — calm, tender, self-possessed — 
friends over whom hung the sacred shadow of the eternal 
parting — at least the parting which we call eternal in this 
world — though it often makes closer and nearer, for the 
rest of life, those who otherwise would have been forever 
divided. 

Perhaps Emily felt this; for, as she raised herself a 
little from her sofa, and held out her hand to Mr. Sten- 
house, there was not a trace of agitation or confusion in 
her manner. 


89 


Two Marriages. 

“ I am very glad to see you. It was so kind of you 
to come. Did you leave your wife quite well ? and all 
the children ?” 

Commonplace, simple words they were — the simplest, 
most natural, that could possibly be chosen — and yet they 
were the best and safest. They took off the edge of that 
sharp agony which was thrilling through every fibre of 
the strong man’s heart. They brought him back to the 
commonplace daily world, to his daily duties, and his or- 
dinary ways. The wholesome, saving present came be- 
tween him and the delirious past. And though it was 
Emily’s old smile, her very tone of voice, and a trick of 
manner she had — how well he recalled it, of half extend- 
ing her hand, drawing it back, and then putting it for- 
ward again, with the uncertainty that was the weak point 
in her character — still he had no desire to snatch her to 
his arms, and hold her there, in her old familiar place, 
like any mortal woman. He felt inclined rather to stand 
apart and gaze at her, as she lay, consecrated from earth- 
ly emotion in her almost superhuman peace, or else to 
fall on his knees and worship her, as Dante worshiped 
his Beatrice when he met her in the fields of Para- 
dise. And he found himself powerless to say any other 
words than one or two, as brief and inexpressive as her 
own. 

“ My wife and the children are well. It was very good 
of you to send for me, after I had been so rude, so un- 
grateful almost, to your husband.” 

Emily bent her head, acquiescing ; and then, as if with 
a great effort, 

“ I had something to say to you — ^something I thought 


90 


Two Marriages. 


you would listen to, from me, now. I entreat you to ao 
cept this partnership. It will be a good thing for you, 
and an equally good thing for Sir John and Mr. Knowle. 
You would like Sir John very much if you knew him 
well. He knew nothing about you and me till lately. 
And he has been such a good, good husband to me.” 

“ Thank God for that ! If — if he had been any thing 
else than good to you — ” 

And then, shocked by the sound of his own harsh 
voice jarring on the stillness of the room, and still more 
so by perceiving the sudden tremor that came over Lady 
Bowerbank, he stopped, recognizing the sanctity of sick- 
ness — of near advancing death. 

“Yes,” he added, almost in a whisper, “I feel very 
grateful to Sir John Bowerbank ; I am not ashamed of 
his knowing — indeed, I have been asking Mrs. Knowle 
to tell him — how very poor we are, and are likely to re- 
main ; and that if he really still wishes me to accept his 
offer, I will do my utmost to prove deserving of it.” 

“Will you? oh, will you?” clasping her hands in her 
old, pretty childish way at any thing she was very 
glad of. 

John Stenhouse turned away. 

“ It is not easy, for I will do it because you wish it — 
for your sake.” 

“ Ho ; do it for your own,” said Emily, solemnly, with 
all the old childish manner gone. “ Do it, that you may 
take a wise man’s advantage of this chance of getting on 
in the world, and living fully the life that is before you. 
Think, a life of twenty, thirty years, with work to do, 
and money to use, and influence to make the most of, for 


91 


Tivo Marriages. 

cbe good of yourself and all that belong to you. That is 
what I want. I want you to lead your own noble, active, 
useful life — just as I once planned it — though it was not 
to be beside me, and though I shall not even see it ; for 
I am going away, John — you know that?” 

He could not deny it ; he did not even attempt to do 
so ; he just moved his lips, but they would not form a 
sound. 

“Yes, going away — in a few days, or a few weeks 
more, to where I know I shall be quite happy — hap- 
pier than I ever could be here. I only wished before I 
went to let you know the truth. She,” glancing to Mrs. 
Knowle, “ she has told you all ?” 

“ Yes,” he muttered, but attempted not, nor did Emily 
offer, any farther explanation. One a husband, the other 
a wife, with the shadow of the dead father between them 
— it was impossible. The past was over and done. But 
the present was peace — all peace. 

“ And now good-by, and God bless you,” said Emily, 
faintly. “ Give my love to your wife. Does she know 
any thing about me ?” 

“ Ho ; I never told her.” 

“ Ah ! well, let that be as you choose. And one thing 
■ — I know I have forgotten one thing that I had to say 
to you — Mrs. Knowle, what is it ? Oh, my head ! Please, 
Mrs. Knowle, will you help me?” with the querulous tone 
and wandering eye which told at once how fast her sand 
of life was running. “Yes, I remember now; it was to 
give you this,” taking a valuable diamond brooch from 
under her pillow, “ and to ask you, if ever you have a 
little daughter of your own, to give it to her from mo. 


92 


Two Marriages. 


And perhaps, if your wife did not object, you wouldn’t 
mind calling her Emily ?” 

Nobody answered or stirred, not even Mrs. Knowle, 
who stood at the window in nurse’s vacated place ; nor 
John Stenhouse, who sat opposite the sofa where Lady 
Bowerbank lay — sat, with his hands clasped tightly on 
his knees, looking at her, as if he wished to carry away 
the last picture of her, vivid as life and youth, permanent 
as love and death. 

At length he moved, and, taking the brooch from her 
hand, kissed both, and so bade her farewell. 

“ If you come soon to settle in Liverpool, perhaps I 
may see you once more,” said she, gently, and with a 
sort of compassion in her voice, for she saw that he was 
absolutely dumb with sorrow. But both knew that this 
was only a fiction to hide the last good-by ; and when 
the door closed between them, both felt that they never 
would see one another again. 

They never did, though Lady Bowerbank lived for sev- 
eral weeks longer, and even after the time when the Sten- 
houses came to settle in Liverpool. She heard all about 
them from Mrs. Knowle, who, in her customary active 
way, was exceedingly helpful to the rather helpless In- 
dian lady ; and she seemed to take a faint, flickering in- 
terest — the last interest of her fading life — in the house 
they fixed on, the manner they furnished it, and their 
general household ways. Nay, she sent many little gifts 
to them — harmless, domestic gifts, such as not even the 
proudest man could reject, and which, without making 
any external show of giving, greatly added to the com- 
fort of Mr. Stenhouse’s home. But she never asked to 


93 


Two Marriages. 

see him again. She seemed to feel that the last meeting 
had been a peaceful closing of every thing that bound 
her to life, and every thing that made death painful ; ap- 
parently she did not wish to revive either, but lay per- 
fectly at rest, waiting patiently for the supreme call. 

It came at last, quite suddenly, as often happens in 
consumption, when both the watchers and the patient are 
lulled into a hope that it is still far distant. She had no 
one with her, and no time to say farewell to any body ; 
only the nurse, running to her and bending over her, fan- 
cied there came through the choking of the expiring 
breath the words “John — dear John.” 

Consequently the woman fetched Sir John, and told 
him, and Mrs. Knowle, and every body, that Lady Bow- 
erbank’s last words had been her husband’s name. No- 
body contradicted the fact. 

****** 

It may be thought a proof of the hardness of John 
Stenhouse’s heart to state that except the one day of 
Lady Bowerbank’s funeral, when, out of respect to her 
memory, the office of Bowerbank and Co. was closed, and 
the clerks had liberty to enjoy themselves as they pleased 
— and she would have been glad of it, dear, kindly heart ! 

■ — except on this occasion the junior partner of the firm 
was never an hour absent from his desk. He came early 
— he went late — he filled the place of both his senior 
partners — Mr. Knowle, who was laid up with an attack 
of rheumatism, and Sir John, from whom, of course, little 
could be expected just now. In every way he did his 
duty like a man ; and not one of those excellent gentle- 
men on ’Change, with whom he daily transacted business. 


94 


Two Marriages. 


giving promise that the new blood which had come into 
the firm would make the house of Bowerbank and Co. 
higher than ever among Liverpool merchants — not one 
of them ever suspected that within the week a light had 
gone out of this young man’s life which nothing in the 
world could ever relume. 

Nevertheless, John Stenhor.se’s life has neither been 
useless nor sad. Moderately prosperous, and widely hon- 
ored by all who know him, externally he may be consid- 
ered a happy and successful man. And his home, if a 
little dull sometimes, is always quiet and comfortable. 
In course of time it was brightened by a little daughter 
— his very own little daughter — and he called her Emily. 
In compliment — and very right too, every body said — to 
the head of the firm and his deceased wife, poor Lady 
Bowerbank. 

Emily’s instinct — true woman’s instinct — was correct. 
Sir John and Mr. Stenhouse became fast friends. Such 
strange likings often occur, under circumstances which in 
meaner natures produce only jealousy and aversion. But 
these three — the two men left living, and the sweet wom- 
an happily dead — were all good people, none of whom 
had intentionally wronged the other, but had all been 
sinned against by the one selfish, hard heart, which was 
now a mere handful of dust. Still, by the merciful ordi- 
nance of Providence, evil itself is limited in its power 
against good, especially when after it comes the solemn, 
healing hand of inevitable fate, which the foolish and bad 
resist, but by which the wise and good are calmed and 
soothed. 

When Emily was dead, the two honest men who had 


95 


Two Marriages. 

loved and mourned her — one with the wild angry passion 
of loss, the other with a half-remorseful tenderness — were 
unconsciously drawn to one another in a way neither 
could have explained or desired to explain, but both felt 
it was so. They sought one another’s company shyly 
and doubtfully at first; afterward with a yearning sort of 
curiosity ; finally out of warm regard. The great differ- 
ence of age between them, which might have been that 
of father and son, and the fact that the one had never had 
a father nor the other a son, also combined to prevent all 
feeling of rivalry, and to form a bond of mutual attraction 
and mutual usefulness. And she who was gone, though 
her name was never once named between them till Mr. 
Stenhouse asked Sir John’s permission to give it to his 
baby daughter, constituted a tie stronger than any thing 
external. 

Mr. Knowle was a little surprised, and so was Mrs. 
Knowle, to see the great cordiality and even intimacy 
which in the course of a year sprang up between the 
senior and junior partners. But the Knowles were both 
such kindly people that, though they did not understand 
it — indeed, would have expected things to be altogethei 
different, they were exceedingly glad it was so — exceed- 
ingly tender, too, in a half sad sort of way, over the baby 
Emily, whom good Mrs. Knowle took to with a warmth 
surpassing even her universal and ardent affection for all 
babies. 

And so the three households of the firm of John Bow- 
erbank and Co. still subsist — two rich and childless, one 
much poorer, but not without many blessings. There 
is, at all events, wherewithal to put food into the little 


96 


Two Marriages, 


mouths, and clothes on the little bodies, and instruction 
into the little minds; and John Stenhouse is a good fa- 
ther, who, in a literal sense, “ makes no step-bairns,” but 
is equally just and tender with his own and his wife’s 
daughters. As a parent of young children he has been 
almost faultless ; what he may be when the little maidens 
grow up and take to marrying. Heaven knows ! But 
the sharp experience of his own life may be all the better 
for theirs. 

People do say that one of them is not likely to be poor 
all her life, but will be chosen by Sir John Bowerbank 
as his heiress, at least so far as regards the late Lady 
Bowerbank’s fortune ; his own. Sir John openly declares, 
he means to divide among charitable institutions. Poor 
little Emily ! now running about under the shady alleys 
of Birkenhead Park in her cotton frock, and with occa- 
sional holes in her shoes, she knows not what may be her 
destiny ! Nor does her father — good man — who watches 
her and guards her, and is both father and mother to her, 
for Mrs. Stenhouse, though sweet as ever, has sunk into 
confirmed laziness and elegant invalidism. Her girls are 
good children, but the apple of the father’s eye is his own 
little daughter; and no doubt even now he thinks with 
a certain vague dread of the young man who may be 
coming some day to snatch her from him. 

Still, under all circumstances, even the alarming catas- 
trophe of Emily’s marriage, I think John Stenhouse will 
prove himself a just, an unselfish, and a loving father. 
And if — ^human nature being weak at best — he is ever 
tempted to be otherwise, he will think, as he does think, 
in many a wakeful midnight, with his wife fast asleep be- 


Two Marriages. 


97 


side him, of that quiet grave, within sound of the waves 
on Waterloo shore, where lies buried the love of his 
youth — the one woman who would have made him really 
happy and been happy herself — who, instead of dying 
thus, might have lived to be the light of his home and 
the mother of his children — poor Emily Kendal. 



PARSON GARLAND’S DAUGHTER 






PARSON GARLAND’S DAUGHTER. 


CHAPTER I. 

The Eeverend William Garland was, in the primitive 
sense of the word {vide Chaucer and others), and as it is 
still used in remote English parishes, of which his own 
formed one of the remotest and smallest, emphatically a 
“parson.” Whether legally he could be termed rector, 
vicar, perpetual curate, or incumbent, I do not know ; in 
his own place he was rarely called any thing but “ the 
parson,” just as the only other educated person within 
the boundary of the parish was called “ the squire.” 
They divided the land between them— and the people’s 
hearts, though in both cases the division was notably un- 
equal. But with this said squire — Eichard Crux, of 
Cruxham Hall — the present story has little to do, more 
than to mention his name, and the fact of his residence 
within the parish (at the shooting season, for two months 
in every twelve), in order to show what a lonely parish 
it must have been, and what a shut-up, solitary existence 
this was for any man of education and refinement to lead. 
Yet the Eeverend William Garland had led it for more 
than twenty years, and now, though over seventy, he still 


102 


Two Marriages. 


continued to discharge, single-handed, without even a 
week’s absence, the duties of pastor to that small and 
simple flock. 

A very simple flock they were, in truth, many of them 
never having been in their lives farther than the nearest 
market-town, ten miles off. They subsisted chiefly by 
farm labor and fishing ; for, being only half a mile from 
the coast — the southern coast of England — they now and 
then roused themselves sufficiently to secure a little of 
the deep-sea riches that lay close at hand, and drive a 
mild and innocent piscatory trade, chiefly in lobsters. 

But, on the whole, the aspect of the place and its few 
inhabitants was as if they and it had grown up out of the 
earth somehow, and remained there, stationary as- cabba- 
ges, with no need to toil for their existence, and no pow- 
er or will to change it — at least this was the impression 
it would probably have made upon a stranger, who, in 
crossing the miles upon miles of waving downs, ending 
in those sheer precipices of chalk rock which form the 
often-sung “ white cliffs of Albion,” came upon the tiny 
village of Immeridge. 

It was almost a compliment to call it a village, for it 
consisted of a mere handful of cottages, one being ele- 
vated into the dignity of the post-office and general shop, 
a single house, and the parsonage. The church, as old 
as the Norman Conquest, was very small, and its church- 
yard contained so few graves that every one of them was 
a separate chronicle;’ and by going over them, you might 
guess, fairly enough, at tne village history for centuries. 
^11 its family records of joy and sorrow, birth, marriage, 
and death, lay covered over in peace by the green turf 
here. 


103 


Two Marriages. 

Here, too, lay the secret of what struck every accident- 
al worshiper in the church, and every stray visitant to 
the village and parsonage, as such a remarkable thing — ■ 
that a man like the Reverend William Garland should 
ever have been found at Immeridge, or, being so located, 
could possibly have remained there, as he had done, for 
twenty long years. 

Just between the parsonage garden-gate and the chan- 
cel-window was a head-stone, notable only for its plain- 
ness and for the brevity of the inscription upon it. There 
was only a name, “ Mary Garland,” and three dates of 
the three epochs which record all lives — “born,” “mar- 
ried,” “ died.” Between the first and second was an in- 
terval of forty years ; between the second and third one 
year only. Underneath — the letters being so equally old 
and moss-covered that the oddity did not at first strike a 
passer-by — was a second inscription, “Also of the Rever- 
end William Garland, her husband, who died , aged 

years;” blanks being left for the figures, to be filled 

up — when ? by some hand unknown. 

In that grave, which the present generation at Immer- 
idge almost forgot existed, and which only an occasional 
old man or woman gave a sigh to, in watching the par- 
son’s gown sweep past it, Sunday after Sunday, on his 
way from his own gate to the vestry door — in that little 
grave lay the mystery, such as it was, of Mr. Garland’s 
life from manhood to old age. 

He had fallen in love with her — the “ her” who to oth- 
er people was now a poor handful of dust, but which to 
him was still a living and real woman and wife — fallen 
in love, not very early, for he was a shy man and a hard 


104 


Two Marriages, 


student, but soon after he got his fellowship. They were 
quite alone in the world — orphans, with no near kin, he 
being the last of an old county family, having gone up 
to Cambridge as a sizar, and thence worked his way to 
considerable honor ; and she, of no family at all, having 
worked her way also, and earned her bread hardly as 
a resident governess. It was an attachment which, as 
neither had any thing to marry upon except love, might 
fairly be characterized as “imprudent;” but there was 
no one to tell them so, and the mere love made them 
happy. So, as they were both young enough to wait, 
and as some one of the livings in the gift of college was 
certain to fall to Mr. Garland’s lot in time, they did wait, 
silently and patiently, for fifteen years. 

No doubt it was a sad alternative. Of a truth, this 
sitting watching for dead men’s shoes is one of the hard- 
est trials to human endurance and human goodness ; but 
somehow they bore it, these two, and were not actually 
unhappy — that is, they were less unhappy than if they 
had parted, on the prudential motives which, had they 
not luckily been two lonely creatures, would have been 
worried into them by affectionate friends and relatives. 
As it was, they were at least allowed to blight their lives 
in their own way. 

At length the living of Immeridge fell, in customary 
rotation, to the eldest fellow, and though it was a very 
poor one, and the next one due was considerably richer, 
still William Garland decided not to let it pass him by. 
He, and Mary Keith too, were willing to risk any pov- 
erty that was not actual want sooner than longer separa- 
tion. So they married ; and as blessings, like sorrows. 


105 


Two Marriages. 

rarely come alone, a few days after her wedding, she was 
left a legacy which doubled their income, and made the 
brave facing of narrow means a needless courage, to be 
smiled over, contentedly and half proudly, in the years 
to come — the bright, easy, sunshiny years which never 
came. 

For within thirteen months Mrs. Garland was taken 
out of her husband’s arms, and laid to sleep until the 
resurrection morning, under that green grass, between the 
church chancel and the parsonage gate. She died — more 
than peacefully — thankfully, telling him she had been 
“ so very happy and she left him a bit of herself — not 
the little daughter he had longed for, but a baby son, 
who for days was scarcely taken notice of, and whom 
nobody expected to live. The boy did live neverthe- 
less ; and the first interest his father showed in him, or 
in any earthly thing, was in christening him, as near to 
his mother’s name as possible, Marius Keith Garland ; 
and from that hour William Garland roused himself, 
almost by miracle, from the stunning stroke of his sor- 
row ; and grave college fellow as he had been only a few 
months before — and even his brief married life was only 
beginning to shake him out of his long -habitual old- 
bachelor ways — he made himself at once both father and 
mother to the puny infant — his only child. 

For at fifty, a man who has had the blessing — ay, even 
if a fatal blessing, of loving one woman all his life — who 
has married, and lived happy with her only for a year, 
is a little less likely than most men to marry again. Mr. 
Garland never did so. Whether, through a certain want 
of energy, which perhaps had been the weak point in his 


106 


Two Marriages. 

character, and influenced his fortunes in sadder ways 
than he himself suspected, or whether the wound, which 
scarcely showed outside, had in truth withered up the 
springs of life and manly ambition forever, certain it was 
that he never tried to better himself by leaving the little 
village which had witnessed his crowning joy and utmost 
anguish, which was his son’s birthplace and his wife’s 
grave. He settled down in this out-of-the-world nook, 
discharged faithfully and fully all his duties there, but 
sought no others. He refused all attractions from with- 
out — though these were not wanting to a man of his cul- 
tivated tastes, for he was a first-rate mathematician, and, 
for the two often go together, a scientific musician like- 
wise. He never revisited his old college haunts, and 
after a few years seemed to have not a thought or in- 
terest beyond the boundary of his parish and its duties, 
such as they were. 

Not that he was in any way soured ; a man of his 
sweet nature could not be, especially by a sorrow which 
had come direct from Providence, and had no wrong or 
bitterness in it. But it had fallen upon him too late in 
life for him to recover from it ; and though his heart was 
not crushed or broken, for with a woman’s gentleness he 
also seemed to possess a woman’s miraculous strength in 
afiliction, still his masculine ambition was killed within 
him. He could not rise and go back into the world, and 
make himself a new path in it ; he preferred to take his 
child to his bosom, and hide himself in the quiet home 
which for one little year she had made so happy ; narrow- 
ing his wishes down to his duties, and hers, which he 
had iilso to fulfill, .and so spending, as it were, in the 


Two Marriages. 


107 


shadow of her perpetual invisible presence, the remain- 
der of his uneventful days. 

A life which some may think small, limited, unworthy 
of a man, and a man of education and intellect. Possi- 
bly : I neither defend it nor apologize for it ; I merely 
record it as it was, and had been for twenty years ; for 
now young Keith Grarland (since his school-days he had 
dropped the “ Marius” as being odd and heathenish, and 
because the boys turned it into “ Polly”) was actually 
grown up from the forlorn, puling baby into a fine young 
man, whom his father, justly considering the difference 
of half a century between parent and child, was too wise 
to educate entirely himself, but had sent first to a public 
school and then to college — the same quiet old college at 
Cambridge where Mr. Garland had spent so large a por- 
tion of his life. 

Of course that cost a good deal — quite one half of his 
income ; but he did not grudge it. He never grudged 
any thing to his boy, nor restricted him in aught but 
what was wrong. And though Marius did wrong things 
sometimes, the parson’s only son was not a bad boy — not 
more selfish than only children are prone to be ; very 
unlike his father, and still more unlike his mother, hav- 
ing neither the delicate refinement of mind and body of 
the former, nor the noble moral nature, generous, frank, 
and brave, which had made Mary Keith beloved till her 
dying day by a man far cleverer and handsomer than 
herself; still, young Garland was a fine fellow, full of 
animal life and activity, with a sufficient quantum of 
brains and affections to serve as ballast for both — a good 
^hip, well built And sound, capable of manj a voyage, if 


108 


Two Marriages. 

only it should please Heaven to put a steady captain on 
board, and a quick-eyed steersman at the helm. 

But why farther describe the lad ? He was like most 
lads of his age — neither better nor worse than his neigh- 
bors — fairly well liked both in the little world of Immer- 
idge and the larger one of his college. And to his fa- 
ther — well, to the solitary parson, this one untried vessel 
was his argosy of price, on which all his life’s stores, 
youth’s memories, manhood’s pride, and old age’s hope, 
were solemnly embarked, as men sometimes (and women, 
alas ! only too often) do embark their whole treasures in 
a single ship, and sit and watch it from the shore, sailing, 
sailing far away — whither, God knows! — the only cer- 
tainty, often the only reliance, in such an awful watch 
being the firm faith that He does know. 

Mr. Garland had just sent his son back to college after 
the first long vacation spent at home, partly in reading — 
or what Keith called such, and partly in wandering up 
and down country in the lovely September days, with 
his gun on his shoulder, though it was seldom that he 
brought home a bird. Indeed, the youth had, his father 
thought, an unlimited faculty for doing nothing; and 
after many weeks of that valuable employment, it was a 
certain satisfaction, in spite of the pang of parting in the 
fatherly heart, which circumstances had made likewise 
almost motherly in its tenderness and its anxiety, to feel 
that the lad was safe back at his work again ; for Keith 
always worked hard, and conscientiously too, so far as 
the conscience of twenty years goes, when he was really 
within the walls of his college. 

In the still October sunshine, which streamed in one 


109 


Two Marriages. 

unbroken flood over the smooth downs, and dazzled 
whitely where they broke abruptly into high chalk cliffs, 
walked the parson, gazing idly on these long familiar 
green slopes, and on the glittering sea with its specks of 
ships, each seeming stationary, yet in reality gliding, 
gliding away, every minute farther and farther, like hu- 
man lives, into the under world. Mr. Garland had bid- 
den his son good-by only an hour or two before, and his 
mind absently followed the lad from these known places 
to others equally well known, which belonged to his ear- 
lier world, lingering dreamily over those same old col- 
lege walls which had been his own home for so many 
years. He had never revisited them, never wished to 
revisit them ; but his fancy hung over the thought of 
them — those gray cloisters and courts, those green leafy 
avenues, with the fondness that most University men 
have for their Alma Mater, the place mixed up with 
all their youthful hopes, and dreams, and friendships, to 
which they cling tenderly to the last day of their lives. 

Mr. Garland liked to picture his boy there, with all his 
future before him — a future full of high hopes, college 
honors, worldly successes, and, by-and-by, domestic joys ; 
for the good man was eager, as we all are, to plan for our 
successors a brighter destiny than our own, fraught with 
all our blessings and none of our woes ; profiting by our 
experience and omitting our mistakes ; carrying out vic- 
toriously all that we desired, yet failed to do ; and enjoy- 
ing fully every bliss that to us Heaven’s inscrutable wis- 
dom denied. There must have been a curious simplicity, 
as well as youthfulness of feeling, still latent in the old 
man of seventy, for, as he walked along, he amused him‘ 


110 ^ Tivo Marriages. 

self with planning his son’s future almost as a woman 
would have done; for his secluded life had kept in him 
that freshness and unworldliness which women generally 
retain much longer than men, and which often makes a 
woman who was elderly in her teens, in old age as young 
in heart as a maiden of twenty. It was almost childlike; 
nay, he smiled at it himself — the way the good clergj^- 
man speculated about his boy, as he slowly meandered 
on, his soft white hair floating over his coat collar, and 
his hands clasped behind him over his lengthy, and, it 
must be owned, rather shabby coat-tails. 

Marius — the father alone still called him Marius — was 
to take holy orders — that is, if he had no strong objec- 
tions thereto ; but he should never be forced into any 
thing. He might win his degree and as much of college 
honors as he could, but he was not to struggle for a fel- 
lowship ; there was no need, since he would inherit his 
mother’s little fortune; and a fellowship hindered mar- 
riage, which the twenty -years solitary widower still be- 
lieved to be the purest aim and highest blessing of any 
man’s existence. 

“Yes, Marius must marry,” said he to himself, with a 
half sigh. “ And his lot shall not be like mine. He 
shall marry early — as soon as ever he is in full orders, 
and can get a good curacy — perhaps even a living : I can 
still bring some influence to bear.” 

And with a pleased look he called to mind a very 
friendly letter from his bishop lately received, and anoth- 
er from a mathematical dean in a neighboring diocese, 
urging the publication of a book on some abstruse topic 
whereon Mr. Garland had wasted gallons of “ midnight 


Ill 


Two Marriages, 

oil,” and quires of valuable paper, during the last two 
solitary winters at Immeridge Parsonage. 

“ Perhaps I could make it into a book after all, and so 
get my name known a little, which might be useful to 
my son.” 

Not to himself; that phase of ambition never crossed 
the parson’s imagination. Nor had he ever been able to 
make use of any body for himself. But his son ? Many 
a scheme of most childlike Machiavelianism did he con- 
coct, as he climbed slowly up, and as slowly descended, 
these eminences of green turf, round which the cliff-swal- 
lows and an occasional sea-gull were merrily circling. 
These schemes were solely for his boy’s benefit — ac- 
quaintances to make, influential people to be cultivated, 
and so on, and so on, even to the last and most vital 
question of all — where in the wide world was Keith to 
find for himself a wife ? 

At Cambridge, certainly not ; for, at the date of this 
history, wider even than now was the gulf between Dons 
and undergraduates, rendering the entrance of the latter 
into any thing like family life very difficult, nearly im- 
possible. And at Immeridge Keith’s lot was worse. Not 
a household in the parish contained any youthful wom- 
en-kind above the rank of laborers’ daughters, except 
Cruxham Hall, by-the-by ; but the Misses Crux were 
quite elderly, and, save at church, the young man had 
never beheld them, otherwise the father might have built 
a charming little romance, since, knowing he came of as 
good blood as the Cruxes, it never occurred to him that 
a marriage between the hall and the parsonage would be 
in the least a mesalliance. If, indeed, he had a weak point, 


112 


Two Marriages. 

this true, honest Christian man, it was that, having been, 
as the phrase is, “ a gentleman born,” and having lived 
all his life among gentlemen, he was a little sensitive on 
the point of gentlemanhood — that is, he liked his inti- 
mate associates to be of good birth, good breeding, and 
possessed of those nameless refinements which to be per- 
fect must be known by the absence of any demonstration 
thereof, even as the test of pure water is its being as col- 
orless and tasteless as it is clear. 

“ Yes,” meditated the good man, “ Miss Crux is not 
bad — pretty, and quite a gentlewoman ; she would have 
done had she been ten years younger. But now, where 
in the wide world is Marius to look out for a wife?” 

And then he laughed at his own folly in so seriously 
arguing the matter, when the boy was only a boy, not 
one-and-twenty yet. 

“ The idea of marrying can never have entered his 
head. What an old idiot I am to let it enter into mine !” 

But, in spite of himself, he could not quite dismiss the 
Alnaschar-like vision, born perhaps out of the unwonted 
gravity and tenderness, more manly than boylike, with 
which Keith had bidden him good-by that morning ; the 
vision of his only son bringing to the parsonage a wife, 
who of course would be the parson’s daughter. 

“ My daughter ! yes, she would be that. Only to 
think ! I should actually have a daughter.” 

And with a sudden gleam of remembrance there 
flashed back upon the old man’s fancy that old dream, 
dreamed before Keith was born or thought of — that vi- 
sion of beauty which to most men takes a shape feminine 
—the father’s delight — the little daughter. 


Two Marriages. 


118 


What if, by -and -by, this dream should be realized? 
Not exactly as he had first desired it — the little girl all 
his own, growing up from babyhood to womanhood as 
his ideal daughter, but as his daughter-in-law — next best 
— who might be a very perfect woman too — pretty, of 
course, though he did not absolutely exact it ; her moth- 
er, that is, her mother-in-law, had not been pretty, yet was 
not Mary Garland the essence of all grace and all lady- 
hood ? Of course Keith’s wife would be a lady, well educa- 
ted, possibly clever — Mr. Garland disliked stupid women. 
But still he would give up the brilliancy if she had good 
common sense and household wisdom — the true, delicate, 
feminine wisdom which alone makes harmony in a house- 
hold, and welds together its jarring qualities into a smooth 
surface of family peace. A sweet temper, above all, she 
must have — this paragon of daughters-in-law ; a nature 
calm and even, placid and bright, like that which for thir- 
teen little months had spread such a sunshine through 
the parsonage rooms, that to this day the sunshine had 
never quite gone out of them. The woman that was to 
come — the parson’s “daughter,” would bring it halfback 
again, and shine upon the evening of his days like the 
dim but lovely reflection of days departed. 

The tears came into Mr. Garland’s eyes as he thought 
of all Keith’s wife would be to him, and all he would try 
to be to her, till he loved her already as if she had been 
a real existence — as she was, of course, somewhere in 
the world. He wondered where, and what she was like, 
and what happy chance would bring her and his boy to- 
gether? 

“ ‘Truly I am a very foolish, fond old man,”’ said he 


114 


Two Marriages. 

to himself, quoting “ Lear,” and then, after his dreamy, 
meditative fashion, wandering away from the subject in 
hand to speculate on the play in general, and especially 
on the character of Lear, whom he always thought had 
been considerably overpitied and overrated. 

“ I should like to write a criticism on him — the weak, 
ambitious, vain, exacting old fellow ; what better daugh- 
ters could he expect to have? He who could so exile 
Cordelia and curse Began scarcely deserved a better fate. 
I fancy our children are very much to us as we are to 
them. I hope never to feel the ‘ serpent’s tooth but oh, 
I hope still more that I shall never play old Lear to my 
boy Marius. She was a sensible woman, that poor Cor- 
delia — 

“ ‘ Sure I shall never marry like my sisters, 

To love my father all.’ 

And when Keith marries, I must make up my mind to 
some sacrifices ; I can not expect him to ‘ love his father 
all!’ Heigh-ho! Can that be actually Valley Farm 
gate ?” 

He found he had walked six or seven miles across 
country to the nearest farm-house out of his own parish, 
where twice or thrice a year he was in the habit of call- 
ing. It belonged to a worthy old couple, Mr. and Mrs. 
Love, who had inhabited it for half a century, and made 
it into the pretty place that it certainly was. Keith had 
always been fond of going there, and was a sort of spoiled 
pet to the childless pair, and his father was grateful to 
any body who was kind to Keith. So, as the sun was 
now sloping westward, he thought he would just climb 
the one little hill above — somehow this year Mr. Garland 


Two Marriages. 


115 


had felt the hills higher, and the valleys deeper than they 
used to be — and invite himself to tea and a rest in Mrs. 
Love’s parlor. He always liked a chat with the old lady, 
and Marius had not mentioned having seen her lately ; 
possibly because the college man had not found that sim- 
ple old couple so interesting as formerly, and had been 
less often to the farm, which neglect the father determ- 
ined to make up with a little extra civility. 

“ Is Mrs. Love at home?” he asked of a girl who stood 
feeding poultry by the stable-door — a servant evidently, 
though for a minute the parson had doubted it, being 
struck by the grace of her attitude and the prettiness of 
her face. But her arms were red and dirty, and so was 
her gown ; and the moment she opened her mouth it was 
quite clear she was only a farm-servant. 

“ The missus bean’t at home, please, sir,” answered she, 
dropping a courtesy, and blushing red as a peony ; “ but 
the measter be about somewheres ; would ’ee like to see 
’un, Mr. Garland?” 

“ You know me, it seems, my girl,” said the parson, 
stopping to give a second look into the face which really 
would have been pretty had it only been clean. “ Do 
you belong to Immeridge ?” 

“Ho, sir ; I do come from C ,” naming a town 

several miles off. 

“And you live as servant here?” 

“ Yes, sir.” 

“Well, you have a kind, good mistress, I know that, 
and you look like a good girl, who would be dutiful 
and attentive to old folk. I hope you will long remain 
here, and be a comfort to them. Tell your master I am 


116 Two Marriages. 

taking a rest in the parlor; he must not hurry him- 
self.” 

So the good parson sauntered in at the always open 
door, a little pleased, in spite of its dirt, by the pretty 
face ; he so seldom saw a new face at all, and this one 
attracted him for the moment, just like a new roadside 
flower. He soon forgot it, however, for, being weary, he 
had scarcely sat down in Mr. Love’s easy arm-chair be- 
fore he fell sound asleep. 

When he awoke it was to see the servant-girl standing 
beside him, examining him curiously. Her master had 
not come in, for which absence she made some confused 
explanation in an accent so broad — so much broader than 
even Mr. Garland was used to, that he gave up the at- 
tempt to understand it, especially as he was very hungry, 
and there lay ready prepared beside him a capital tea, 
which was evidently meant for his benefit. 

“You are a sensible lass, and a kindly,” said he, as he 
fell to with earnest appetite, noticing also that she had 
“ cleaned herself up” to wait upon him, and was really 
very comely. 

But his glance was only momentary ; though, as he 
ate his meal, he spoke to her from time to time with that 
gentle but slightly reserved manner which, people said 
sometimes, was the only fault the parson had in his par- 
ish ; he was a little too dignified and distant with his in- 
feriors. Not that he meant any unkindness, but simply 
that he did not quite understand them. 

Having finished his tea, he left all courteous messages 
for the master and mistress, and thanked the girl for her 
civilities. 


Two Marriages. 117 

“ And what is your name ?” asked he, absently, as he 
drew on his gloves. 

“ Charlotte.” 

“ Good-by, then, Charlotte, and thank you. My com- 
pliments to your master and mistress, and say I shall call 
again some day before long.” 

He put a shilling into her hand and went his way. 


118 


Two Marriages. 


CHAPTER II. 

Mr. Garland was sitting in his study, where, to save 
fires, and trouble to his one old servant — almost as old 
as himself — he very often sat all day — these long, quiet 
winter days, which he usually spent quite alone, or, rath- 
er, with one invisible companionship, perhaps nearer to 
him in winter than in the summer season, for she — his 
wife Mary — had died in early spring, and his last mem- 
ories of her were connected with the winter afternoons 
and evenings, when she used to lie on that sofa, pale but 
peaceful, with the fire-glow shining on her light hair ; for, 
even though useless, she liked to stay beside him, and he 
fancied he could write his sermons better when she was 
there. So she often lay for hours almost silent — Mrs. 
Garland was never a great talker — watching him as he 
wrote, and thinking. He often wondered in after years 
what she could have been thinking about, and whether 
she had any dim prevision of his lonely years to come, 
which made her look so strangely sweet and grave. 

It was all over now, long, long ago, but the memory of 
it and of her was vivid yet. Even to this day, on a Sat- 
urday afternoon, the parson would lift up his eyes from 
his sermon, half expecting to see her lying there, looking 
at him with those eyes of love which had warmed his 
inmost heart his whole life through — a love which death 
only would quench in closing them forever. 


119 


Two Marriages. 

Mr. Garland sighed, but it was a sigh of remembrance 
rather than of sorrow. Time had long since taken the 
sting out of his grief ; besides, he was not quite forlorn — 
no man ever can be who has once been thoroughly hap- 
py. He pushed his sermon aside for a time, and took up 
and reread his son Keith’s Christmas letter, on this, the 
first Christmas that they had ever been apart. 

Keith had written to say he was working very hard — 
so hard that he thought it advisable to remain at college 
during the brief vacation. And in this letter he made, 
for the first time, a hesitating request for a little more 
money. Altogether, though affectionate enough, even 
pathetically so, in its regrets for his unavoidable absence, 
it was not so satisfactory an epistle as Keith was wont to 
write, and had written weekly from school and college 
ever since his first separation from home. Still, he was 
working hard, as he always had worked, both at school 
and college. A certain light-mindedness of youth had 
sometimes worried his elderly father a little, but the par- 
son’s heart had never yet had cause to ache on account 
of his boy. 

“I think,” he said to himself, as he once more drew to- 
ward him the manuscript sheets of his sermon — a Christ- 
mas sermon on the prodigal son — only half finished, and, 
alas ! never to be finished — “I think, after all, his mother 
would have been rather proud of him.” 

And as Mr. Garland sat leaning his head on his hand 
—both the hand and the profile, though brown with ex- 
posure to weather, being almost woman-like in their del- 
icacy of outline — his mild eye wandered to the empty 
sofa, so little used all these years that it was still covered 


120 


Two Marriages. 

with the washed-out, faded chintz which Mrs. Garland 
had made new for it when they were first married. His 
fancy slipped back to those early days, and all the blank 
days which followed — not mournfully, for the life be- 
tween, also of God’s appointing, had been safely lived 
through, and the reunion could not be so very far oflT 
now. 

“Still I should like first to leave my boy happy — as 
happy as I was myself. Poor lad! what a dull Christ- 
mas he must be having, except for work ; it is good to 
feel that he works so hard. But I should not like him 
to settle into a dull, dry, college life — a mere bookworm, 
and not a man at all. No, no. Just a few years of good 
steady work — as a young fellow ought to work — and 
then a living — a home — and a wife. My dear lad I” 

The parson settled himself once more to his writing ; 
but he had scarcely done so and was pausing a moment, 
pen in hand, with the end of the incomplete sentence 
running in his head, when there came a knock to his 
study door. 

“ Come in,” said Mr. Garland, a little surprised ; for it 
was a rule that only matters of vital moment were al- 
lowed to disturb him on Saturdays. “ Any body ill in 
the village, Jane ?” 

“No, sir, not that I know of,” replied — not his serv- 
ant, but a visitor very rarely seen at Immeridge — Mrs. 
Love, of Yalley Farm. The old lady stood hesitating in 
the doorway, her cloak powdered and her boots clogged 
with snow. 

“ Sorry to disturb you, sir ; hope you’ll excuse it,” said 
she, dropping a nervous courtesy. 


121 


Two Marriages. 

Certainly, my good friend,” said the parson, placing 
her comfortably by the study fireside with that chivalric 
gentleness of demeanor which he always showed to all 
women. “ But how could you think of coming all the 
way from Valley Farm in this inclement weather?” 

“ I never thought about the weather,” returned Mrs. 
Love, and the fixed smile which she had persistently kept 
up slowly faded ; “ I had a — a sort of a message to you, 
sir, and I thought — my good man thought — I had best 
come over and deliver it myself.” 

“ How very kind of you,” answered the parson, cordi- 
ally ; “ and how — we’ll tell Jane to get you some tea at 
once.” 

The old woman stopped him with his hand on the 
bell. 

“ Oh no ! — please, sir — oh don’t ; I couldn’t swallow 
any tea — I — I — ” 

She burst into tears. 

Mr. Garland sat down beside her and took her hand, 
as he was wont to do with any of his parishioners in af- 
fliction. Some people said of him that in ordinary life 
he held too much aloof from them ; that, with his exces- 
sively refined tastes, feelings, and sympathies, the gulf 
between himself and the humble, rough, illiterate folk 
around him was such that, though he had dwelt so long 
among them, nothing but a great sorrow could altogether 
bridge it over. But when sorrow did really come to any 
one of them, no man could be more tender, more gentle, 
more truly sympathetic than the parson. 

“I am sure there is something on your mind, my friend. 
Vou shall tell me what it is presently.” 


122 


Two Marriages. 


“ I don’t know how to saj it, sir. It’s about — about — 
oh, I wish you knew without my telling ! — Your son — ” 

The father turned pale. 

“ Nothing wrong with my son ? I heard from him a 
week ago. Has he written to you lately ?” 

“ No ; I dare say he didn’t like to write. In truth, Mr. 
Garland, your son hasn’t been behaving quite well to my 
good man and me.” 

For that was the form in which she and Mr. Love had 
decided she should open the subject, and so break it 
gradually — the cruel secret which as yet she only knew, 
but which she dreaded every hour some chance waft of 
gossip might bring to Keith’s father’s ears. 

Mr. Garland’s color returned — nay; he turned hotly 
red. 

“ My son not behaving well to you ! There must be 
some mistake, Mrs. Love ; he is not in the habit — But 
if you will tell me what his offense is, perhaps I can ex- 
plain it.” 

Mrs. Love shook her head. 

“It isn’t that, sir; we would have borne a deal with- 
out taking any offense, we were so fond of him. Oh me ! 
I’m as grieved as if it had been a son of my own who had 
gone astray.” 

“Gone astray!” repeated Mr. Garland, sharply; “stop 1 
you forget it is my son you are referring to.” 

“It’s him, sure enough; though, if all the world had 
told me, I wouldn’t have believed it of him any more 
than you would, sir. But the girl herself confessed, and 
whatever she is now, she wasn’t a bad girl once ; and she 
never told me a lie, never deceived me in the smallest 


123 


Tivo Marriages. 

way before. And she has been my servant for a year, 
and I’ve known her ever since she was a baby — poor lit- 
tle thing !” 

“ Mrs. Love,” said the parson, recovering himself a lit- 
tle from his bewilderment, and speaking with distant dig- 
nity, “may I ask you to explain yourself a little clearer? 
What can I or my son possibly have to do with your 
difficulties as regaras your domestic servants ?” 

“]Sro,sir,” drying her tears, and speaking rather warm- 
ly ; “ but when a young gentleman condescends to keep 
company with a domestic servant — when he makes be- 
lieve to visit the master and mistress, and under pre- 
tense of that, meets the girl at all hours and in all sorts 
of places ; and after he’s gone, the other servants joke 
her; and at last — never mind how, sir — it’s all found 
out. And she doesn’t deny it, but brazens it to my face, 
and says he’s her sweetheart, and that she knows he 
will marry her at once — and — oh, sir — oh, Mr. Gar- 
land!” 

For the old man had sat down, sick and faint, like a 
woman. 

“ Never mind me, Mrs. Love ; go on with your story. 
Who is the girl ?” 

“ Lotty — that is, Charlotte Dean — Thomas Dean the 
plowman’s daughter.” 

“And — the young man? You do not mean — you 
can not possibly mean to imply that the young man is 
my son ?” 

“ Ah I but he is, though ; not a doubt about it,” said 
Mrs. Love, shaking her head. “And I thought, sir — my 
good man and me both thought — that it would be better 


124 Two Marriages. 

to come and tell you at once, before you heard it other- 
ways.” 

“It? What is it? But I beg your pardon. I guess 
the whole story. Oh, my unfortunate boy !” 

Mr. Garland put his hand to his face — his honest face, 
which burnt crimson, though he was an old man. To 
many men — alas! many fathers — the news of such an 
error — such a crime, would have been nothing, causing 
only a smile or a jeer, or perhaps a flash of passing irri- 
tation at the extreme folly of the thing ; but it was quite 
different — it always had been quite different with Wil- 
liam Garland, Mary Keith’s lover and husband. The 
groan that burst from him went to Mrs. Love’s heart. 
“ And I thought to myself,” she owned afterward, “ per- 
haps those folk are best off who never have any chil- 
dren.” 

She was terribly sorry for him, yet knew not in what 
form to administer consolation to a gentleman so far 
above herself in education and manners, and who, she 
could not help seeing, took the fact which she had com- 
municated — one of a class of facts only too common here, 
as alas 1 in many other rural districts — so much more to 
heart than even she had expected he would. 

“Don’t give way, sir,” she said at last — “don’t, or I 
shall wish that I had never told you.” 

“ It was right to tell me. Let me hear the whole story 
— at least, what you suppose it to be.” 

Mr. Garland sat upright, clasped his hands upon his 
knee, and prepared to listen, as he had listened many a 
time to many a similar story of misery and sin, but it had 
never come home to him till now. Still he sat, with his 


125 


Two Marriages. 

grave, fixed eyes, and sad, sliut mouth, and tried to force 
himself to listen to it, calmly, fairly, and justly, as if it 
had been any other story of his parish, or about any oth* 
er ordinary sinner — not his own son. 

Mrs. Love repeated, with many emendations and ex- 
tensions, the tale she had previously told. She said the 
— love affair shall it be called ? but the word belongs to 
a different sort of courtship, and a higher form of love — 
had been carried on so clandestinely, that, though it must 
have lasted three months at least, she had not a suspicion 
of it. The discovery had happened through the merest 
chance, and after it the girl had disappeared. 

“ Disappeared ?” repeated Mr. Garland, eagerly. 

“ Yes, sir, that’s my trouble — that’s my fear — which I 
came to tell you before all the neighborhood gets talking 
of it She slipped away in the middle of the night, tak- 
ing nothing with her but the clothes she stood in, saying 
not a word to any body, leaving no scrap of writing — for 
that matter, I don’t believe she can write beyond signing 
her name. What she has gone and done nobody knows 
— whether she has made away with herself, or run off to 
her sweetheart at Cambridge — ” 

Mr. Garland trembled, he hardly knew at which of 
these two alternatives, for one would be an escape out of 
the other. 

“ God forgive me !” he cried, starting up, and thrust- 
ing the idea from him — the horrible idea that would 
come — how by her death the girl would be got rid of. 
His first horror at his son’s misdoing having passed over, 
he was painfully conscious of a desire to hush up and 
hide the sin at any cost. To save Keith — only Keith — 


I'Ab Two Marriages. 

was the not unnatural parental instinct ; all parents may 
comprehend and pardon it. 

But by-and-by the good man woke up to something 
beyond the mere instinct of parenthood — that impulse 
for the preservation of offspring which comes next to 
self-preservation — in mothers, God bless them ! often first. 
He became conscious of that large duty — abstract, im- 
personal, involving simple right and wrong — which, if 
even the fondest parents lose sight of, their tenderness 
degenerates into mere selfishness, and their devotion to 
their own children becomes an actual moral offense in 
the sight of Him who holds the supreme balance of jus- 
tice as the Great Father of all men. 

“This girl, whom you say my son has led away, 
though I will not and can not believe it, Mrs. Love, ex- 
cept on stronger evidence than seems to have convinced 
you — what sort of girl is she?” 

“You have seen her yourself, Mr. Garland. She told 
me she got your tea for you the last time you were at 
Yalley Farm — a rosy, black-haired lass, pretty enough, 
but slatternly, which was not wonderful, considering the 
folk she came from. Her father drank himself to death, 
and then her step-mother turned her out of doors. I 
took her for charity, and lest, being so pretty, she should 
come to any harm. Oh dear me ! if I’d only kept my 
eyes open ! But who would have thought it of Master 
Keith?” 

“We’ll not think it,” said the clergyman, in a low 
tone, but hard and unnatural. “ I refuse to think the 
worst of my own son, as I would of any other man’s, un- 
til I am certain of it. Just describe the young woman 
to me till I recollect her.” 


127 


Two Marriages. 

He did so, in time — the dirty -aproned, red-handed, 
rough-haired farm-servant, whose handsome face he had 
remarked; who had waited upon him with such especial 
civility — why, he knew now — and to whom, in de- 
parting, he had given — and she had taken with the ordi- 
nary servant -girl’s humble “Thank you, sir” — a shil- 
ling. 

And this — this was his son’s ideal woman — the object 
of the boy’s first love ! Lawful, or unlawful, remained 
to be proved — still his first love. 

To a man who had never had but one love in all his 
life, and she Mary Keith — Mary Garland — no wonder 
such a discovery came with an almost stunning sense of 
repulsion. 

“Did she say” — the parson’s lips faltered over the 
question, and he did not own even to himself why he 
asked it, or what he desired its answer to be — “Did she 
say, positively, that she knew my son would marry her?” 

“ She certainly did. But you know they always say 
that, these poor creatures, and perhaps they really think 
it, or the men tell them so. Men are a wicked lot, Mr. 
Garland — wickeder, at first, than we women. But then, 
when we once get bad, we go down, down, lower and 
lower, till we stop at nothing but the bottomless pit. Oh 
me I if that should be the end of poor Lotty !” 

“You did like her, then?” said Mr. Garland, turning 
round sharply. “ Speak out just as you would to any 
body else — not me.” 

“ Yes, I liked her in a sort of way. She was very ig- 
norant, but she was not so rough as some o’ them ; and 
she had an affectionate heart. She was an honest girl, 


128 


Two Marriages. 

spite of her bad bringing up, when I took her. I’m sure 
of that. And such a child — only sixteen. He shouldn’t 
have brought her to shame !” 

“ Shame !” said Mr. Grarland, almost fiercely ; “ don’t 
say that. Say nothing you can not prove. Eemember 
you are speaking of my son — my only son — his mother’s 
son. Mrs. Love,” with a look of agony that, momentary 
as it was, whenever the good woman afterward recalled 
it, brought tears into her eyes — “ Mrs. Love, you remem- 
ber his mother ?” 

“ Yes, sir, I do, and that’s what makes me and my 
good man so sorry.” 

“ There is no need to be sorry till you are quite sure 
of this. Some explanation may be found. I will go at 
once to my son. He said he should spend the whole of 
the Christmas hard at work at Cambridge.” 

And he remembered Keith’s last letter — all his letters 
for weeks and months back, which, if this story were true, 
must have been one long concealment. Not deception 
exactly — the father was too just to accuse him of that — 
but concealment. He that for twenty years had been 
open as daylight, frank as childhood, to the tender par- 
ent, who, by his unlimited trust and unlimited love, had 
never given him cause to be any thing different I 

The blow fell hard. Many parents only get what they 
earn. By harshness, want of confidence, and total want 
of sympathy, they themselves, with their own blind hands, 
open the gulf which divides them from their children. 
But in this case there had been nothing of the kind. 
Never a cloud had come between father and son until 
this cloud — the heaviest, short of death, which could pos- 


129 


Two Marriages. 

sibly have arisen. And how was it to be removed? 
For, whether the case was one of mere disgraceful folly 
or of actual sin, of the thing itself there could be little 
doubt. His boy — his honest, gentlemanly, honorable boy 
— had made love to a common farm-servant ; a girl who 
could necessarily have only the lowest allurements of 
womanhood — the personal beauty that pleases, and the 
ignorance that amuses. She might have suited the taste 
of some foolish, coarse fellow, in whom all the elements 
of manhood and gentlemanhood were wanting; but 
Keith — 

Mr. Garland knew well — none better — that a man’s 
whole character and destiny is often decided by the sort 
of woman with whom he first falls in love. This poor 
boy ! — if he had “ fallen in love” with Charlotte Dean, it 
must have been with the meanest half of his nature, in 
the most degrading form of the passion. Kay, it could 
not properly be called love at all, but that other ugly 
word which the Bible uses, though we have grown too 
refined to do so — not, God forgive us I to practice it, to 
extenuate it, to slur it over or gloss it under with every 
sort of mild poetical periphrasis, or else to philosophize 
upon it as a kind of sad necessity, when, instead, we 
ought to face it as what it is ; call it by its right name ; 
pull it down from its high places ; tear the sham, senti- 
mental covering off* it, and then trample it under foot as 
that vile thing, of which, however the heathen world may 
have regarded it, Christ’s Kevelation speaks undoubtedly 
and unshrinkingly thus: 

“ But the abominable, and murderers, and whoremon- 
gers, and all liars, shall have their part in the lake which 


130 Two Marriages. 

burneth with fire and brimstone, which is the second 
death.” 

And whatever the farther allegory may imply, one 
thing is certain, that the first death comes to such sin- 
ners even in this world. 

“ My poor, poor boy ! And he only twenty yet ! My 
miserable boy !” 

It may throw some light upon this man’s character — 
the man whom Mary Garland had loved so long, and 
been so happy with, and to whom, in dying, she had 
trusted her child, with the one prayer that he might 
grow up like his father — it lets light, I say, upon the 
character of Mr. Garland, that the first outcry of his pa- 
rental grief was that of David for Absalom, “My son, my 
son!” Only that — only for his son. He did not think 
of himself at all ; there was no sense of personal wrong, 
no dread of personal disgrace at the scandal which such 
a story must inevitably bring on the clergyman whose 
only child was guilty of such misdoing, and at the weak- 
ening thereby of his influence in the parish. A proud, 
or vain, or self-conscious man would at once have thought 
of these things ; but, though Mr. Garland did afterward 
think of them — it would not have been human nature 
that he should not — he thought of them only secondarily. 
His strongest grief was altogether on his son’s account ; 
first, for the sin ; next, for the misery. 

“I must start for Cambridge at once, Mrs. Love. 
Whatever has happened — whether the girl has gone to 
him, or whether that other dreadful thing you feared has 
happened, which God forbid I my boy will be all the bet- 
ter and safer for having his father beside him.” 


131 


Two Marriages. 

“He will, sir, indeed !” said Mrs. Love, earnestly. “Poor 
dear lad ! he has got something like a father. And now, 
Mr. Garland, I must go home, or my good man will be 
thinking I’m lost in the snow.” 

“My kind old friend, how I have been forgetting you!” 

Mrs. Love told afterward, with a tender garrulity, how 
Mr. Garland had insisted on her having tea in the study 
before she left ; how he poured it out for her himself, and 
waited upon her with an ancient courtesy, not overlook- 
ing her smallest needs; “though I could see all the time,” 
she added, “ that the dear gentleman hardly knew what 
he was doing.” At last she departed, and the parson 
was left alone, face to face with his heavy care. 

Nothing so heavy had befallen him since his wife’s 
death. Then, it seemed as if Fate, weary of persecuting 
him, had spent her last shaft and let him rest. Not a 
single anxiety, not even a week’s sickness to himself or 
his boy, had since darkened the parsonage doors till now. 
But this grief. It was so strange and sudden, so utterly 
unforeseen, that, at first, when he had closed the gate 
upon Mrs. Love and returned to his study, which looked 
exactly as it looked an hour before, he could hardly per- 
suade himself that all was not a nightmare dream. 

He sat for a little with his head upon his hands, trying 
to realize it, and gradually all came clear. He perceived 
that, whether or not true in its worst and blackest form 
' — in a measure the tale must be true — at least sufficient- 
ly so to lay upon Keith’s future life, and upon all after 
relations between father and son, a cloud, a doubt — the 
first deception on one side, the first distrust on the other; 
like the fatal 


132 


Two Marriages. 

“ Little rift within the lute, 

That by-and-by will make the music mute.” 

“ It is the beginning of sorrows,” said the old man to 
himself; and he clasped his hands, half in submission, 
half in despair, and looked into the embers of the forgot- 
ten fire with a hard, dry-eyed angmsh, pitiful to see. 
The young suffer and have still hope, for themselves and 
for others; but the old, who have nothing to look for- 
ward to, and in whom the sharp experience of life had 
deadened the excitement of the struggle with pain, as 
well as the expectation of its happy ending, the grief of 
the old has always a sort of passiveness, sadder than any 
sorrows of earlier years. 

“ What should I do ?” sighed the parson to himself ; 
“ for something must be done, and I have nobody to help 
me. No one could have helped me — except one.” 

But she slept where this affliction and every other could 
touch her not, and her husband was thankful for it. 

“ I wish I slept beside you, my poor Mary !” 

For the first time for many years the widower uttered 
her name, spoke it out quite loud, until he himself started 
at the sound. But, uttering it, he felt as if his solitude 
were made no longer empty — as if in the dreary blank 
of the room she came and put her airy arms about his 
neck, in the long familiar way, sharing his burden as she 
had so often shared it, and in some mysterious fashion 
giving him the comfort that love only can give — a wife’s 
love — in life, and, for all we know, afterward. 

Mr. Garland roused himself, drew his chair to the study 
table, put by his sermon, and began to make his plana 
for the impending journey. This was rather a serious 


133 


Two Marriages. 

matter, for he never traveled, and knew nothing about 
railways, the nearest of which did not approach Immer* 
idge by ten or a dozen miles — Keith, who was a practical 
young fellow, always settled his comings and goings with- 
out troubling his father. In Mr. Garland’s utter igno- 
rance, it was necessary to take counsel of Jane before 
forming any plans whatever. And now there came upon 
him the nervous apprehension as to how much Jane 
knew — how much any body knew — whether, when he 
ascended the pulpit to-morrow, every body would not 
know it? 

A shiver of fear ran through him — actual fear; that 
moral cowardice which men have so much more than 
women, especially men of the parson’s excessively deli- 
cate and refined nature. That dread of public opinion — 
that shrinking from public reproach, to escape which 
some will bear any amount of inward torture, attacked 
him in his weakest, tenderest point. His bravery gave 
way; he thought, if he could only start at once — that 
very Saturday night or Sunday morning — and so escape 
all? 

Escape what ? The sin ? Supposing it existed. Alas ! 
sin no man can ever escape from. The shame? That 
too, if inevitable, would have to be endured. Ay, in its 
sharpest form ; for while, rightly and justly, no son is 
held responsible for, nor in any honest judgment, can be 
dishonored by, the wickedness of his parents, there is also 
a certain measure of justice in the world’s opinion that a 
parent is not quite blameless for the misdeeds of his son. 
Exceptions there are, solemn and sad ; but in most in- 
stances the comment of society at large is not made alto- 


134 


Two Marriages, 


gether unfairly, as in the case of Eli (bitterly did this 
poor father — ^father and priest also — recur to the words), 
“ His sons made themselves vile, and he restrained them 
not.” 

No, there was no escape. The thing must be met and 
faced. Whether it turned out great or small — a mere 
annoyance or a life-long disgrace, there was no use in 
running away from it. Besides, if he left home, he would 
have had to shut up the church. Was the house of God 
to be closed because the minister was a coward, and dared 
not meet his people? She would not have advised such 
an act, she who had always before her eyes the fear of 
God, and that only — never the fear of man. 

“No, I will not do it!” said the parson to himself. 
“ Besides, for my boy’s sake, I ought to keep an honest 
front till I have proved there is cause to be ashamed.” 

So he bestirred himself, rang for Jane, and told her, to 
her exceeding surprise, that she must pack up his port- 
manteau, and find some conveyance to take him across 
country, for that he was going to see Master Keith on 
Monday morning. 

“ Bless ’ee, sir, I’m so glad I And when shall you be 
back again ?” 

When indeed — or how ! 

He hoped, he said — with a sad hypocrisy of cheeriness 
— to return by next Sunday, unless his son particularly 
wished to detain him longer. 

“ You may be sure o’ that, sir. Master Keith often 
said there wasn’t any thing would make him so happy 
as a visit from his father.” 

“Did he say that?” with an eager clutch at the merest 


Two Marriages, 


135 


straws of comfort out of that great treasure of love which 
seemed drifting hopelessly away from him. And he 
thought reproachfully — the self-reproach to which tender 
hearts like his are so prone — that perhaps he too had 
erred ; that if he had not shut himself up so closely in 
his study, thereby leaving Keith too much alone — if he 
had tried more to win his boy’s confidence and sympa- 
thy — had been to him, not less of a father, but more of a 
friend, this might not have happened. 

“ I will try and act differently now,” he said, vainly 
repeating, and forming many a resolution for the fu- 
ture, when only the present cloud should have passed 

by. 

It felt lighter next morning, which was a bright, clear 
frosty Sunday, and Mr. Garland had been all his life pain- 
fully sensitive to atmospheric influence. And when, as 
he entered the church, all things appeared the same as 
usual — no one pointed the finger or looked hard at him 
either in his coming or going — he began to hope that the 
story had not reached Immeridge ; that perhaps, as Mrs. 
Love was not a gossiping woman, and had acted so wise- 
ly and kindly hitherto, all might be hushed up, and in 
time quite forgotten. 

He put it as far from his mind as he could, and tried 
to serve his Maker and to instruct his people throughout 
that strange Sunday ; but when night closed the whole 
matter came back upon him with relentless pain. In his 
complete uncertainty, he kept picturing to himself, over 
and over again, the two bitter alternatives — of the girl, 
Charlotte Dean, visiting Keith Garland to his disgrace — 
perhaps shaming him openly before his college; or els© 


136 


Two Marriages. 


— as Mrs. Love suggested — the victim might have pun- 
ished the seducer in a still more terrible way — a way 
which Keith could never forget all his life long. And 
with horrible vividness Mr. Garland’s fancy recalled a 
scene he once beheld in his youth, of a drowned girl 
dragged with boat-hooks from the bottom of a pond. He 
seemed to see it all over again, only the ghastly, swollen 
face was the face of the girl Dean, with the rosy cheeks 
and the curly black hair — pretty enough — but with the 
prettiness of mere physical beauty. How could Keith 
have ever cared for it. 

Still, there the fact was, undeniable ; and a worse trag- 
edy might follow — her death, or the scarcely less blight- 
ing misery of her living. 

“ Nevertheless, I will not judge until I know the whole 
truth. Keith will surely tell it to me when I see him to- 
morrow.” 

And with a desperate clinging to that to-morrow, which 
must at least end his suspense, and bring a solution to 
some of his difficulties, Mr. Garland packed up his port- 
manteau — very helplessly — but he did not like to ask 
Jane to do it, as it was Sunday, and he never gave her 
any extra work on Sundays. 

Besides, he kept out of the old woman’s sight as much 
as possible, for she would ask questions about Master 
Keith, and send him messages, and talk about the great 
delight he would have in seeing his father, till the poor 
father felt as if driven wild. 

When Jane was gone to bed, and the house all empty 
and still, the parson went to his little store of money, and 
took out thence as much as was required for his journey- 


Two Marriages. 137 

then, with a second thought, he went back and took it 
all ; “ for,” he said to himself, “ who knows ?” 

Also he put away his books and papers, locked his 
writing-table — for the first time these many years — and 
made other little arrangements concerning his affairs, 
which seemed to him advisable considering his years, 
and the painful nature of his journey — “for,” he again 
repeated, “ who knows ?” 

Finally, he laid his head on his solitary pillow, and 
thought, with a kind of sad curiosity, how strange it 
would feel the next night to be sleeping, for the first time 
for twenty years and more, under his old college roof, far 
away from that little mound over which he could hear 
the elm-trees soughing outside, and without remembering 
which he seldom closed his eyes at night or opened them 
in the morning. 

“May God help me to do right, however hard it be!” 
was his last prayer before he slept. “ O God, my Father 
in heaven, teach me to be a good father to my Mary’s 


son. 


138 


Two Marriages, 


CHAPTER III. 

It was about four o’clock on a winter afternoon when 
Mr. Garland stood at the gate of his old college, for the 
first time since he had left it twenty years ago, to take 
possession of the living of Immeridge, and to be married 
to Mary Keith. How well he remembered that October 
morning, soft and sweet as May, when his long-delayed 
happiness, come at last, had colored his life with all the 
hues of spring, though he was nearly fifty years old. 
Now, all things outside looked, as they were with him- 
self, at the day’s end and the year’s. The only bit of 
color in the murky winter ^ky was the rift of sunset be- 
hind the pinnacles of his familiar chapel — the most beau- 
tiful chapel, he often used to think, that mortal hands 
have ever built. Its airy architecture came out against 
the fading light as perfectly as ever, and the old man 
stood and looked at it for a minute or two with exceed- 
ing tenderness. The twenty years between — the happi- 
ness and the woe, slipped away for the time being — nay, 
he went back far longer, and was again a young man at 
college, with the world all before him, or a busy student, 
an early made Don, thinking his college the queen of all 
colleges, and his University the very centre of the world. 

He could have believed he had only quitted it yester- 
day, the place was so little changed. Its smooth square 


189 


Two Marriages. 

lawn was green as ever; and across the white mist 
which was slowly rising up over it — as in so many win- 
ter afternoons of old — there shone the same cheerful glim- 
mer from the buttery door, and from the tall windows 
where the few men who remained “ up” at Christmas 
were dining in hall — Keith among them of course. 

The parson thought he would wait till hall was over, 
and then go unobserved to his son’s rooms. A sudden 
meeting might vex or confuse the lad, or any chance com- 
panion who was with him might notice something unus- 
ual in this unexpected parent-visit. Better that father 
and son should meet alone, and quietly, when Mr. Gar- 
land too might be better able to command himself ; for, 
now that the moment was come, he felt an involuntary 
nervousness creeping over him as to how his son would 
comport himself; an uneasiness whether he might find, 
not the boy Keith at all, but a strange man — all the hard- 
ness and wickedness of exhibiting youthful manhood. 

Poor Keith ! Gradually, during the long meditative 
day, all the father’s anger toward him had melted away. 
And now, weary with his long journey, feeling within 
himself, as if it had fallen upon him with a sad sudden- 
ness, the inevitable weakness of age, conscious also of a 
certain forlornness in thus coming back, a stranger, to the 
familiar places, the parson’s heart yearned over his boy, 
his only child, the tenderest, nay, the only tender tie he 
had left in the world. When, in the darkening twilight, 
he watched two or three black figures issuing out, and 
moving round the gravel-walk of the quadrangle, eye and 
ear became involuntarily intent, in case he might detect 
the light footstep and lively laugh that he knew so well. 


140 


Two Marriages, 


Nevertheless he shrank still more under the shadow of 
the gateway, whence, himself unobserved, he could watch 
each young man that passed. 

No, none of them was Keith, who must have gone 
straight to his rooms. Not being quite certain where 
these were, and growing every moment more weary in 
body and in mind, he went back to the gate-keeper, smil- 
ing at himself for his own silly surprise that this was not 
the quaint, white-bearded old fellow that used to be call- 
ed “Moses,” who of course was dead and buried years 
ago. 

“Can you show me Mr. Garland’s room?” 

“ Up that staircase, next to the buttery, first door on 
left hand,” was the answer, given rather carelessly — more 
carelessly than Fellows were used to be addressed in the 
parson’s time. He felt this a little, and then recollected 
that he was no longer at home in his own college ; that 
he revisited it merely as a stranger, who could only be 
judged by his exterior, which was probably out of date, 
and shabby, even for a country parson. So he said, with 
a little dignity of manner, 

“ Thank you. I know the rooms now quite well ; I 
was a Fellow here myself for fifteen years.” 

“Oh, indeed, sir;” the porter’s tone changed, and he 
respectfully touched his hat. “ But I’m afraid, sir, you’ll 
not find Mr. Garland. His rooms are locked up; though 
I think his bed-maker has the key, as he said he might 
come back before term.” 

“ Come back ! Has he gone away ?” 

“Yes, sir ; he left two days ago.” 

The poor father leaned against the gateway to keep 


141 


Two Marriages. 

himself from falling. All strength seemed to have slip- 
ped out of him. Then he said, feebly trying to keep up 
a coloring of indifference, 

“ Two days ago, did you say ? That was Saturday.” 

“Yes, sir, Saturday — a sudden journey; for he told 
me the day before he meant to stay up and read all 
Christmas. But young men don’t always know their 
own minds, and there’s sometimes a little more than 
meets the eye — eh, sir !” added the jolly porter, with a 
twinkle in his own. 

But Mr. Garland noticed it not. He asked, first eager- 
ly, then with assumed carelessness, 

“And where — perhaps he mentioned where he was 
going?” 

“Hot he. He wanted it kept dark, I fancy, for he told 
me not to send on his letters unless he was not back in a 
week or two, and then to forward them to his governor.” 

“ To — what did you say ?” 

“His father. But, bless my soul,” as a sudden idea 
dawned in the good fellow’s mind, not unfamiliar with 
young men’s difficulties, “maybe you’re his father, sir.” 

“Yes,” said the old man, briefly. And then he asked 
permission to sit down for a minute in the porter’s room. 
“ I have had a long journey here, and my son and I 
have — ” he paused for a second in search of some frag- 
ment of truth which would save him from betraying him- 
self or Keith — “ have somehow missed one another.” 

“ So I perceive ; very annoying to you, sir. Will you 
come nearer to the fire? You’re very cold, I see.” 

The rest and warmth came only just in time. As Mr. 
Garland sat down, he felt a sickness like death stealing 


142 


Two Marriages. 


over him, during which his only care was to preserve 
some sort of decent appearance externally, so as to save 
Keith’s credit, and hide every thing as long as it could 
possibly be hid. 

The civil gate-keeper left him, and then he cowered 
over the fire, trying to steady his shaking limbs and rally 
his feeble strength, and think of what was to be done 
next. 

The present conjuncture was one he had never fore- 
seen. That Keith should actually have left college — gone 
away no one knew where — leaving no clew except what 
slender information might be got at by inquiries humilia- 
ting to the father and likely to bring disgrace upon the 
son — it was very hard to bear ! A sudden flight it must 
have been ; and at least Keith’s intention of reading all 
Christmas had not been a deception. But why had he 
ordered his letters to be forwarded to Immeridge? Ei- 
ther he had nothing to conceal, or he wished to blind his 
father’s eyes with the daily expectation of his coming, 
and so prevent pursuit or inquiry. Or, a third possibili- 
ty, perhaps he was now reckless of both. Perhaps he 
had taken the girl, Charlotte Dean, away with him ; and, 
as she so confidently asserted he would, had married her. 

Married her — a common servant I Old as he was, Mr. 
Garland’s blood — his honest, honorable, gentle blood — of 
which secretly he was not a little proud, seemed to boil 
in his veins at the thought. Hot indignation, bitter shame, 
outraged affection, filled him by turns against the son who 
could so disgrace himself and his lineage. He started to 
his feet with the energy of youth, uncertain where to go or 
what to do, except that he felt he must go and do some- 


Two Marriages. 


143 


thing. But it was in vain. The moment he tried to 
stand his head swam round, and he dropped back into 
his chair. 

There he sat a long time, half stupid, it seemed, hear- 
ing through a sort of doze the college porter talking and 
“ chafang” with some young fellows outside. Within, he 
watched the blazing, crackling, cheerful-looking fire, and 
felt himself a poor, forlorn, feeble old man, who had not 
strength to do any thing, even if there was any thing to 
be done. 

There was nothing. Either by accident or design, 
Keith had left behind him not a single clew to his where- 
abouts. So long as a hope remained that the young man 
had not compromised — nay, ruined himself for life, his 
credit ought to be saved, and that could only be done by 
the most cautious silence. 

Never throughout all his simple, virtuous days, had 
Mr. Garland acted the hypocrite before, but now he did it. 
He called the porter, entered into conversation with him 
about college matters, and got from him by various in- 
quiries as much information concerning Keith as could 
safely be obtained. This was little enough ; the young 
man had apparently been living steadily and creditably, 
and reading hard all term. No outward vicious signs 
had betrayed him to the small college world ; so far, his 
credit was secure. 

The father took care still to maintain it. With a pa- 
thetic diplomacy, he managed to convey to the porter the 
idea that his disappointment was very trifling, and his 
son’s absence of no particular moment. He took counsel 
of the man as to what inn he should put up at for a night 


144 Two Marriages. 

or two, just to revisit his old Cambridge haunts and old 
friends. 

“Why not turn into your son’s rooms at once, sir? 
It’s very often done at vacation-time, and you, of course, 
could get permission directly. Shall I see about it? and 
we’ll have the rooms open and every thing comfortable 
for you in an hour or two.” 

Mr. Garland thought a minute and then consented, foi 
it was the simplest plan, and he felt so weary, helpless, 
and forlorn. If he had only somewhere to lay his head 
for the night, he might wake in the morning strengthen- 
ed, and able to judge and to act. Just now he was capa- 
ble of neither. He had so long lived out of the world 
that every thing — even the ordinary noises of the street, 
confused and troubled him. He longed to be at Immer- 
idge again, laying his head down on his own peaceful 
pillow, within only a stone’s throw of that still peacefuller 
pillow where it would one day lie. The craving that we 
all have at times, and stronger as we grow older, to 

“Lie down like a timid child, 

And sleep away the life of care 

Which we have borne and still must bear,” 

came over him heavily. He turned out into the foggy 
night, and, while Keith’s rooms were being got ready for 
him, walked round and round the familiar paths, past the 
chapel, and the high ivy-covered wall, and along by the 
willows at the water-side to the bridge over the Cam. 
There he paused, and mechanically stood leaning in the 
old spot where he used to lean for hours in his early- 
morning or late-at-night “constitutional” nearly half a 
century ago. 


Two Marriages. 


145 


Was it actually half a century? Yet there was no 
perceptible change. Up and down the river the lights 
of the different colleges flickered in their old places, and 
the stars overhead — Ursa Major, Ursa Minor, Orion’s 
Belt, and the silvery duplex wave of the Milky Way — 
shone just as in those days when he used to dabble in as* 
tronomy. The only change was in himself. And yet, 
somehow, his life had been so single, so true — such a 
faithful life, in short — faithful to God and man — that he 
did not feel greatly altered even now, except perhaps that 
— as on this winter night — the human lights were grow- 
ing dimmer, and the heavenly ones larger and clearer, as 
he neared his journey’s end. 

Under this starry stillness the parson’s mind became 
calmer, and his thoughts less bewildered as to the posi- 
tion in which he was, and the next step it was advisable 
to take. 

Evidently to attempt to track Keith was useless. A 
cleverer, more worldly man would have found the pur- 
suit difficult; to Mr. Garland it seemed impossible. Noth- 
ing short of applying to the police, and hunting down his 
own son by means of a detective officer, could have avail- 
ed any thing — perhaps not even that. Keith might be 
already married, though that was improbable. 

The parson — for a parson and a married man — knew 
surprisingly little of the marriage laws ; still he was 
aware that both surrogates and registrars refuse a license, 
and clergymen decline to officiate when, as in this case, 
both parties are under age, and the marriage is without 
the consent of parents. Mr. Garland tried to recall all 
the small practical legal facts concerning his own simple, 


146 


Two Marriages. 


happy^ holy marriage to the loog-plighted, pure woman 
of his choice, and the contrast between it and such a mar- 
riage as this he feared smote the father’s heart with an in- 
expressible pang. It could not be! His son — his own 
son — and hers could not so degrade himself. And as for 
that other possibility — seduction without marriage — it 
was a crime of which he tried to believe Keith utterly in- 
capable. 

Well, he could do nothing; he could only sit still and 
wait. Before term began Keith must reappear at college, 
unless he was quite reckless as to his own future. If he 
were — if he had done any thing bad enough to bring 
upon him public disgrace — better his father should be 
here to stand by him. Who else should do it? Even 
if the lad had sinned, he was still only a lad ; and whose 
duty was it but his father’s to throw over him the shield 
of calm parental wisdom, equal-handed justice, and pa- 
tient love ? 

Mr. Garland had been fatherless — or, rather, worse than 
fatherless — himself ; he had known what it was to stand 
alone and unprotected against the world. As he paced 
the solitary bridge — which in the days of his youth he 
had paced so often — with lighter, younger feet, but a 
heart heavy with its own burden of now forgotten cares, 
he recalled some words which then had often seemed 
to him worse than meaningless, a cruel mockery, “ Like 
a father pitieth his children, so the Lord pitieth them that 
fear Him.” But time had taught him its merciful lesson; 
he understood them now. As he looked up to the stead- 
fast stars, which seemed singing in their courses through 
the changeless heaven, and remembered how he too had 


147 


Two Marriages. 

been led, as it were, by an invisible hand, through his 
long course of seventy years, and how his boy had it all 
yet to run, there came into him a feeling of compassion 
so intense, so divine, that he seemed to comprehend, in a 
sense clearer than he had ever yet preached it, the all- 
perfect Fatherhood of God. 

With such thoughts — most thankful for them and for 
the peace they brought — Mr. Garland went back and in- 
stalled himself in his son’s rooms, which, of course, he had 
never yet seen, though he had often heard Keith’s de- 
scription of them. But he found them smaller and poor- 
er than he expected. No extra luxuries, such as young 
men at college can so easily waste their substance in, 
brightened the shabby furniture, which seemed coeval 
with the parson’s own college days. No indications of 
light or coarse tastes decked the walls; no portraits of 
ballet-girls or prize-fighters ; not even a University boat- 
race. All was quite plain and humble ; the lad had evi- 
dently been, so far, an honest lad, true to himself and to 
his father, spending scarcely one unnecessary penny out 
of the allowance, which he knew, for his father had told 
him, was not too easily spared. 

“ Poor fellow ! poor fellow !” sighed the parson, as he 
settled himself in his son’s arm-chair, gathered up the 
books — and very shabby second-hand books they were 
— that he found strewn about just as Keith had left them, 
then made his own tea out of the broken-lidded tea-pot, 
pulled off his boots, and put his tired feet into Keith’s 
well-worn slippers. As he did it, thus taking possession 
of the rooms, and enjoying their owner’s unconscious hos- 
pitality, some faint sense of comfort stole into him — a 


148 


Two Marriages, 


hope that things were not so very dark after all, or, at 
darkest, might brighten soon. 

He refreshed himself with his favorite meal, and then, 
lulled by the warmth and silence of the solitary fire, grad 
ually the weakness of age crept over him. He fell fast 
asleep, and dreamt he was a young man once more, work- 
ing hard for his first examination. And then, somehow 
or other, he was married, and sitting in his study at Im- 
meridge, with his wife Mary sitting beside him on the 
rocking-chair which she had bought but never used, rock- 
ing her infant in her arms. She looked so young, so 
sweet! and the baby was such a pretty baby — just what 
Keith used to be — and there was such a heavenly light 
shining round the two, that, though she did not speak to 
him, nor he to her, and though, while dreaming, he had 
some dim consciousness that it was only a dream — that she 
was not alive at all — still Mr. Garland felt quite happy. 
And even when he woke he was happy still. 

He spent fourteen days, one creeping after the other 
before he was aware, at Cambridge, living in his son’s 
rooms, waiting for Keith’s return. At first he was terri- 
bly restless ; could not bear to stir across the threshold ; 
started at every footstep on the stair without; and kept 
his “oak sported” continually, lest any body should in- 
trude upon him. Gradually this state of mind ceased. 
His nature was essentially of the passive kind ; besides, 
he was old, and age takes every thing quietly. After the 
first shock, he seemed almost to have reconciled himself 
to whatever might happen. His present pain he kept en- 
tirely to himself, merely writing to Immeridge that he 
meant to remain at Cambridge till term, and stating the 


149 


Two Marriages. 

same to the few acquaintances whom he made here — old 
Fellows who, hearing of him from the porter, called upon 
him, and invited him almost daily to dine in hall. No- 
body asked him any unpleasant questions, or any ques- 
tions at all. Indeed, he felt keenly what people living 
long in country solitudes are apt to forget, how soon a 
man may slip entirely out of the petty world where he 
thought himself such an important item, and how little 
the said world will trouble itself about him when it has 
ceased to get any thing out of him. 

So, after a brief fit of moralizing, Mr. Garland fell back, 
in a strange ghostly fashion, into his old college ways, 
spending his mornings in University library, and usually 
dining in hall at the old familiar table with some Fellow 
or other. But he rarely went into Combination-room : 
he usually returned to his solitary fire, and settled him- 
self there, sometimes reading, sometimes sleeping, or sit- 
ting half asleep, half awake, scarcely able to distinguish 
the present from the past. He made no outward show 
of grief, never spoke to any body of his affairs, or of the 
suspense he was enduring ; he endured all quite passive- 
ly and unresistingly, as -was the habit of his life; but if 
Keith had seen his father’s face he would have found it 
ten years older since Christmas-day. 

The last day of vacation came, and then Mr. Garland 
could neither eat nor sleep ; never stirred outside the 
door, but sat counting every beat of the clock, and trem- 
bling at every step upon the stair. When he had almost 
given up hope, when it was quite late in the evening, 
Keith appeared. 

Some one must have told the young man that his fa- 


150 


Two Marriages, 


ther was there, for he came in without showing any sur- 
prise. Agitated he was to the last degree, but he did not 
start nor shrink back. Over him, too, had come a change ; 
he was not a boy any more. 

He opened the door and walked steadily into the room. 
His father rose and met him as steadily ; for at sight of 
him the old man’s nervousness vanished, and anger, or 
rather the righteous paternal displeasure which yet had 
no personal vindictiveness, began to revive. He felt that 
the critical moment had come ; that between father and 
son there could be no more disguise, no delay, no mo- 
mentary hypocrisy of friendliness ; all must come out at 
once. Possibly Keith felt this too, for he approached no 
nearer, and made no attempt to take his father’s unoffer- 
ed hand. Still, he was the first to speak — some muttered 
words about “ this unexpected visit.” 

“ I know it is unexpected and un desired. I found you 
absent, and took the liberty of remaining in your rooms 
till you came back.” 

The liberty — oh, father!” 

“ Stop,” said Mr. Garland, checking his son’s advance 
toward him. “You must answer me a few questions 
first. Where have you been ?” 

“To Ely.” 

“ Ho farther ?” 

“ Ho. I had not money enough for traveling.” 

“ Then you have been at Ely all this time?” 

Keith assented. 

“And — answer me the truth, the honest truth, my son, 
for you never told me a lie yet”— and the father’s tone 
was almost entreating — “were you alone?” 


Two Marriages, 


151 


I was not.” 

The parson recoiled, and his next words were hard and 
sharp. 

“Tell me — don’t be a coward, for that is worst of all — 
tell me at once. Are you married ?” 

The youth hung his head, blushing crimson ; but he 
said without hesitation, “Yes, father.” 

The father never spoke, nor even looked at him again. 
He passed him by, walking uprightly, steadily, and stern- 
ly to the door. Then he took his coat, hat, and stick. 

“Father, where are you going?” 

“Do not follow me — you have no right,” was the 
hoarse answer. 

“No right!” 

“ No.” And Mr. Garland turned and looked his son 
full in the face, his own gleaming with passion, the natu- 
ral passion of an honest man and an outraged parent. 
“ No, not the smallest right. I have no son now.” 

So saying, and not trusting himself to say another 
word, the old man went out into the cold dark night, 
closing the door behind him. 


152 


Two Marriages. 


CHAPTER ly. 

An hour later, having succeeded in calming down the 
burst of passion which had shaken all the little strength 
of his helpless seventy years, Mr. Garland determined to 
go back to his son’s rooms. He would not suffer himself 
to be carried away by blind anger ; he would at least find 
out the true state of things — the whole truth, before he 
condemned Keith, before he even attempted to judge 
him ; for justice, that quality rare enough in all men, and, 
alas ! often rarest in men that are fathers, even though in 
them it is most needed and most divine — strict, impartial 
justice had been all his life Parson Garland’s idol. 

His first indignation having subsided, though he deep- 
ly despised his son — ay, despised him ; for the delicate, 
high-minded gentleman felt his very soul revolt from 
such a marriage, and such a wife as Keith had chosen — 
still the youth was his son, his very flesh and blood. 
Nothing could break that tie. And though it had not 
existed — though they had been only guardian and ward 
— oh, that they had! — at the hands of this just man any 
other man’s son would have found equal justice. 

Nor, angry as he was, did his anger blind Mr. Garland 
to the common-sense fact that when a young man makes 
a foolish or disgraceful marriage, whoever else he may 
injure by it, the person whom he most injures is himself. 


153 


Two Marriages. 

When he thought of this, through the father’s storm of 
wrath gleamed rifts of the tenderest, the most agonized 
compassion. Only twenty yet, and his fate sealed for 
life, as every man’s must be who has bound himself to a 
woman of whom he knows little, while what he does 
know makes the future appear as hopeless as the future 
of all hastily-conceived, passion-prompted, unequal mar- 
riages always must be, and deserve to be. Unhappy 
Keith ! 

Yet, however madly he had acted as regarded himself, 
however deceitfully — no, not deceitfully, but uncandid- 
ly, he had behaved toward his father, still he should 
have justice. Where in the wide world might he hope 
to find it, if not at the hands of his own father ? 

Mr. Garland turned back from his weary walk up and 
down Trinity Avenue and the lonely courts of Clare 
Hall — any where that he thought he was least likely to 
meet people, and just before ten o’clock struck came into 
his own college. He entered his son’s room without 
having formed any definite plan of action. He did not 
even trust himself to speculate on what the next hour 
might bring, or whether it would not find him, as in his 
passion he had said, but was a little sorry for it now, 
without a son, without one tie in the wide world to 
bind his thoughts from that future world where now 
seemed his only rest. 

Gaining Keith’s door, he opened it, but gently — so 
gently that the young man did not hear, or was too ab- 
sorbed to notice him. He was sitting over the fire, his 
hands propping his head, and his elbows on his knees, in 


154 


Two Marriages. 

an attitude of dull despair. When he turned his face 
round, its haggardness struck to the father’s heart. 

“Well, Keith?” 

“ Well, sir. Will you take a chair?” 

But the lad did not stir from his own, and his manner 
was indifferent, almost sullen, as if he no longer cared 
what became of him. 

“I have come back to you,” said his father, sitting 
down opposite to him, though a long way off, “just to 
speak a few words, such as no one can speak to you ex- 
cept your father : to ask you how all this happened — 
how you could be so misguided, so insane? Do you not 
know, my poor boy” — in spite of his will there was a 
piteous tenderness in Mr. Garland’s voice — “ that by this 
act you have ruined your prospects for life ?” 

“Very likely I have.” 

“For — am I right? — this girl you have married is the 
girl Mrs. Love told me about — her servant, Charlotte 
Dean.” 

“Yes, it is Charlotte Dean, now Charlotte Garland. 
You can’t mend it or alter it, sir; she is my wife, Char, 
lotte Garland.” 

The poor fellow seemed to brazen the truth out in its 
hardest form, that he might hide himself behind it as a 
sort of shield — a defense against his own conscience and 
against his father. 

That miserable father! only he felt his son to be more 
miserable even than himself To one who knew, in all its 
depth of sanctity, what a real marriage is, the perfection 
of that pure love, happiness before wedlock, and unutter- 
able joy afterward — the thought of all his son had lost 


155 


Two Marriages. 

and thrown away, with a frantic folly that the lad might 
yet give half a lifetime to recall, came upon him with 
such an agony of pity that, instead of reproaching Keith, 
he could have stood and wept over him, even as one 
Weeps for the dead. But weeping was of no avail ; the 
deed was done. Keith had distinctly said, though in a 
tone oh ! how different from a young man’s first proud 
utterance of the word — “ my wife.” 

“ Tell me,” said the father ; “ don’t be afraid, but tell 
me just as you would tell any other man — any friend of 
your own age, how this came about? When were you 
married ?” 

“Yesterday.” 

“ Not until yesterday ?” 

“ No ; we had to wait for the fourteen days’ residence 
and the license, which, after all, I was forced to get with 
a lie — the first lie I ever told in my life.” 

“What was that?” 

“ I made oath I was over age, or, she being only 
sixteen, they would not have granted it. Do you want 
to know any more? I’ll tell you any thing or every 
thing. Nothing can alter it now !” 

The young man spoke recklessly ; but in listening a 
gleam of hope darted through the parent’s mind — in- 
voluntarily, or he would never have given expression 
to it. 

“Stop a minute; would not a false oath make the 
marriage illegal ?” 

“ Father,” cried Keith, fiercely, “ don’t speak of that. 
Don’t put such things into my head, or make me a worse 
scamp than I am already. No, it is not illegal ; I took 


156 Two Marriages, 

care of that — unless you go to law and try to prove it sa 
Do if you dare !” 

“ I have no intention of the kind,” said Mr. Garland, 
gently — nay, humbly — for his conscience smote him a 
little. “You have chosen your own lot, and must abide 
by it.” 

“ So I mean to do.” 

Frantic as the lad was — seemingly driven half mad 
with remorse, or dread at what he had done, or grief at 
having displeased his father — there was a certain spirit 
and courage in him which the father could not but no- 
tice and respect. 

“Tell me, Keith, what made you bring yourself to 
this pass ?” 

“I could not help it. She followed me here; it was 
the greatest chance, the greatest mercy that nobody saw 
her. She begged, entreated — nay, she almost compelled 
me to marry her.” 

Mr. Garland paused — considered ; a hot blush, like a 
maiden’s, mounted into his withered cheek as he regard- 
ed his son, his motherless boy, whom he used to carry 
about C 3 an innocent baby in his arms. 

“ There is one thing which Mrs. Love hinted at, but 
which I refused to believe. I will not believe it upon 
any word but your own. Keith, was there any cause — 
just cause — why this girl should ‘compel’ you to marry 
her?” 

“Yes.” The young man hung his head, and could 
not look at his old father. 

He drew back — this good father, this righteous, hon- 
orable man, who had held all women sacred, first for his 


157 


Two Marriages, 

mother’s sake, and then for that of the one woman he 
adored; above all, for God’s sake, whom the pure in 
heart alone shall ever see. He turned with an unmis- 
takable repugnance even from his own son, and the son 
saw it. 

“ Don’t mistake, father — don’t think of her worse than 
she really is, because what she is I made her. It was 
my fault God forgive me !” 

“In that case,” returned the parson, slowly and delib- 
erately, “she, and no other woman in all this world, 
ought to be the wife of Keith Garland.” 

He said no more ; never till his dying day did he say 
any more, making of his son no farther inquiries, and 
putting the matter altogether beyond argument or dis- 
cussion. He accepted it as it stood, a life-long grief, an 
inevitable ill, but one to be faced in its naked truth as a 
simple question of right and wrong. 

To any one of Mr. Garland’s clear judgment, unbiased 
by worldly sophistries, the decision could not for a mo- 
ment hang doubtful. Hot even had it rested with him 
to allow or forbid the marriage, which, had he met his 
son before that fatal yesterday, might have been possi- 
ble. But now the matter was taken quite out of his 
hands ; he was saved at least from the terrible position 
of being the arbiter of his son’s future. Keith was al- 
ready married ; and, even were his wife ten times more 
objectionable than she was, there could be no question 
as to the duty owed to her, if merley as Keith’s wife, and 
Mr. Garland’s daughter. 

His daughter ! Oh, the bitterness of that word to the 
parson’s heart I Oh, the hopes and longings, and remem- 


158 


Two Marriages. 


brances that were swept away at once as by a flood! 
His son was married ; had brought him his long-expect- 
ed daughter ; and that daughter was Charlotte Dean ! 

Well, the dream was all over; it was not to be. Mr. 
Garland felt his old passiveness creeping over him, 
stupefying him both to present pain and to the future 
that was coming. He only hoped he should not live 
very long. With a sort of dull pleasure, he felt how 
completely, within the last two weeks, his strength had 
slipped away; how he had lost entirely that green old 
age which had so many enjoyments, and had looked for- 
ward to many more. 

He sat silent, could have sat on thus for hours, when 
he was roused by his son’s bitter cry. 

“ Oh father ! can’t you speak to me ? can’t you help 
me? Tell me what in the wide world I am to do!” 

“ My poor, poor boy 1” 

Mr. Garland came forward and touched Keith’s clenched 
hand, gently patting it after the caressing habit of his 
childhood. Then the young man altogether broke down, 
and sobbed, first at his old father’s knees, and then upon 
his neck, like the prodigal son in the parable, which par- 
able the parson henceforward could not read in church 
without many quavering and broken tones, and he never 
preached upon it afterward. 

Far into the night did they sit together, father and 
son, regarding steadfastly their mutual misfortune — for 
that it was a misfortune, Keith, if he did not actually ac- 
knowledge, never denied — and trying to see if there was 
any way out of it. 

The young man did not notice then, being too much 


159 


Two Marriages, 

self-absorbed, but be remembered afterward, when that 
honored white head was hidden from him in the dust, 
how that, in all their conversation, his father seemed to 
take for granted that it was a mutual misfortune, to be 
shared and striven with together; that he never once 
hinted at breaking- the parental bond, or cutting adrift 
the son whom God had given him — not for his own 
pleasure, but as a solemn charge which not the most 
foolish or even wicked act, on the son’s part, could ever 
entirely disannul. “ For,” as the parson was once heard 
to say, long afterward, when some intrusive friend sug- 
gested how much better he had been to Keith than Keith 
to him, “ we did not ask life of our fathers ; we gave 
life to our children.” 

So now, from duty as well as love, he assumed the fa- 
ther’s most painful office, and, old as he was, tried to en- 
ter into that brief frenzy of youth which had ended in 
such a disastrous fatality, for such even the bridegroom 
evidently now felt it to be. Keith scarcely spoke of his 
wife at all ; but of the difficulties and dangers of his own 
position, and the blighting of his prospects, he talked 
freely and very bitterly. Especially he dreaded lest by 
any miserable chance the college authorities should find 
out his marriage. 

“But it must be found out. You could not possibly 
intend to keep it concealed ?” 

“ Well, to tell the truth, I had not thought much about 
the matter,” answered Keith, somewhat confused by his 
father’s air of grave surprise — nay, displeasure. “She 
only entreated me to marry her — she did not expect any 
more. And I thought if I could but keep all quiet till 


160 


Two Marriages. 

I had got through my necessary terms — taken my de« 
gree, and been ordained — ” 

“ Stop I” cried Mr. Garland, and his voice shook with 
the violent effort he made to control himself ; “ you have 
forgotten one result, the inevitable result of the step you 
have taken, or rather of the evil you have done, for the 
last act was the only possible redemption of the first 
You knew what was my heart’s desire ever since you 
were born — that you should enter the church — to suc- 
ceed in all I failed in — to do all I had not strength to do. 
Now this can never be.” 

Keith looked up, startled. 

“No, I say never! No son of mine shall ever offer 
to the Holiest a blemished offering. Never will I see 
brought to the service of my God a life corrupted at its 
very source, and which will take years of repentance 
and atonement to make it a fit example to other lives, as 
that of a minister of the Gospel ought to be. No, my 
son, I forgive you ; I will help you to begin anew in 
whatever way seems best, but one thing I exact as an in- 
evitable necessity — ^you can never be a clergyman I” 

Keith was terribly overcome. He had not thought 
much about his destined profession ; he had accepted it 
simply as his destiny, the one most natural and best 
pleasing to his father ; but, now that the father himself 
forbade it, and for such a cause — now that it was shut 
out from him with all its pleasant associations and ex- 
pectations, he felt the disappointment and humiliation 
very sore. 

“ Then, sir,” said he, at last, “ since I am never to en- 
ter the Church, perhaps you would wish me to leave col- 
lege?” 


161 


Two Marriages. 

“ Most certainly ; and as soon as you can.’* 

That, too, was a great blow, and one evidently unex- 
pected. Keith writhed under it. He dropped his head 
between his hands in a hopeless despair. 

“Oh, what will become of me?” 

Still, he did not attempt to argue. He knew he was 
wholly dependent on his father, for the income which 
would be his one day could not come to him till his fa- 
ther died ; that, in plain truth, here he was, cast upon his 
own resources, burdened with a wife, and — God forgive 
the young man, and the sin which turned blessings into 
curses! — he was thankful it was now only a wife. But 
his circumstances were desperate enough, especially if he 
had to quit college, which he felt must be, for he knew 
by experience that in some things his gentle old father 
could be hard as adamant and remorseless as fate. 

But Mr. Garland was too just a man to assert his mere 
will without giving his reasons for the same, especially 
to a grown-up son, whose relations with a father ought 
to be reverent indeed, yet perfectly independent and 
free. 

“In the first place, Keith” — after this day he never 
called him Marius — “ you could not possibly keep your 
marriage secret ; and if you could, you ought not. To 
live for months and years under false colors, acting a 
daily lie, and continually under the dread of its discov- 
ery, is a position that would ruin any young man. He 
ought not to expose himself to the temptation, and if he 
did one would almost despise him for doing so. Ho, my 
son ; look things straight in the face — it is best. Do not 
be what is almost worse than a knave — a coward.” 


162 


Two Marriages. 

“ I am not a coward, father,” cried Keith, starting up 
and pacing vehemently the room — the shabby, but 
cheery little room — with all its books strewn about it, 
its heterogeneous oddities and delicious untidinesses, yet 
such a room as a man remembers all his life with the 
tenderness belonging to his hard-working, hopeful, hap- 
py college days. “ I am not a coward, and I am ready 
to meet all the consequences of my folly — my confound- 
ed folly and he stamped with his foot like an angry 
child, and something like childish tears came into his 
eyes as he looked round the room. “ It’s bad enough to 
leave college, to put aside my future, for I was reading 
hard — indeed I was, father — to have all brought to light, 
and be set down by the men here as a fool — the merest 
fool — for marrying her.” 

“Better be a fool than a villain,” said the father, 
sternly. 

“You are right,” returned the son, humbly. “I will 
not be afraid again. And now, sir,” continued he, after 
a little, “just tell me what I am to do. I’ll put myself 
entirely in your hands, myself and her too, poor little 
thing! Poor little thing!” repeated he again, “she is 
but sixteen, and she is so fond of me!” 

“ Where is she staying now ?” asked Mr. Garland, not 
harshly, but turning away his face, for he would fain 
hide the expression of intense repugnance that he knew 
must be visible there. 

“At Ely still. She could not be moved. She has 
been very ill. She was only just able to be taken to 
church yesterday to be married, but then it made her so 
happy.” 


163 


Two Marriages. 

And you left her to-day ?” 

“Yes. She insisted that I should go; she knew it 
would injure me if I was missing at the beginning of 
term ; she doesn’t think of herself much — you used to 
say women seldom do — my mother never did.” 

“ Silence !” cried Mr. Garland, in the harshest tone his 
son had ever heard from him. “Do not dare even to 
name your mother.” 

Keith was silent. 

“ I pity you ; I will not forsake you,” the parson went 
on, his hands shaking as he spoke, and his whole face 
aflame. “ I will help you to redeem yourself, if possi- 
ble. But never dare for one instant to compare your 
marriage to my marriage, your wife to mine. What can 
you know — you miserable boy — of such a love as ours ? 
How could you, and the hundreds of foolish lads like 
you, understand what a man’s love is — one pure love for 
one pure woman — founded on thorough knowledge and 
long-tested fidelity ; tried by many temptations, clung to 
through years of delay and hopelessness, and then per- 
fected openly, honorably, in sight of God and man, by 
the closest union with which mortal life can be blessed. 
Keith Garland, you may live many years — live not un- 
worthily or unhappily, but you will never know, never 
comprehend a marriage such as mine.” 

Keith answered nothing. Imperfect as his nature 
was, half- developed, and perhaps inferior, or he never 
could have been allured by Charlotte Dean, still, if he 
did not understand his father, he was awed by him. 

“ Well,” he said at last, “ as I have made my bed, so I 
must lie upon it It is useless to blame me more — I 


X64 


Two Marriages. 

blame myself only too much. Do not talk to me, but 
show me how to act. If you insist on my quitting col- 
lege you take the bread out of my mouth, so tell me 
how I am to earn it elsewhere — for myself and my wife ; 
for I can’t leave her to starve, and I can’t let her go back 
into service again, as she proposed yesterday. Now she 
is my wife,” added he, bitterly, “ that would hardly be 
creditable.” 

“ Certainly not.” 

“ If I were alone,” Keith went on, “ I could manage 
well enough. Any young man ‘ without encumbrances,’ 
as the phrase runs ; with strength in his limbs and a lit- 
tle money in his pocket, can always earn his living and 
make his way in the world.” 

“How? What would you do?” 

“One thing, certainly, which I have often longed to 
do, only I fancied it would vex you to part with me • 
but you’ll not care for that now. I would emigrate.” 

“ Emigrate !” cried Mr. Garland, much startled ; and 
then he folded his hands, and asked calmly, “Where?” 

“ To Canada or New Zealand. I would borrow two 
hundred pounds or so, start off by the next ship, and try 
my luck. I’d like it too,” added the young fellow, with 
his eyes brightening. “ Oh, if I had only the world be- 
fore me once more, with never a clog behind !” 

The word — the cruel word — came out involuntarily, 
and perhaps he was ashamed of having uttered it, for he 
blushed deeply, and began to apologize. 

“You see, of course, when a fellow is married, he isn’t 
quite so free as he was before. And then she is so very 
fond of me 1” 


165 


Two Marriages, 

“There are times,” answered the father, gravely, “times 
in a man’s life when he would be thankful that any 
woman was fond of him — when he would give his whole 
substance for love and can not get it — he has thrown it 
away. When shall you go back to see her — I mean, 
Mrs. Keith Garland ?” 

Keith started, and then recollected himself, blushing 
violently. 

“ I had forgotten. Of course, that is her name, and 
she ought to be called by it.” 

“ Unquestionably.” 

“Father,” and Keith regarded him with a puzzled yet 
contrite look, as if recalled to his own unfulfilled duties 
by the far bitterer parental duties of which Mr. Garland 
never shirked one. “ Oh, father, you are very good to 
me.” 

Then, as a sort of escape from the agitating emotions 
of the hour, the young man turned his attention to prac- 
tical things — made up the fire, got out bread and cheese, 
and beer, and a solitary bottle of wine, administering to 
his father’s wants in many little tender ways, as had been 
his habit ever since he was a tiny fellow — a precocious, 
petted, only child — but still Keith’s was one of those 
kindly natures which can bear spoiling ; if rather feather- 
headed, he was decidedly warm-hearted, and if light- 
minded abroad, was very good at home. 

Their supper ended, the two seated themselves over 
the fire, and calmly discussed what was best to be done, 
avoiding alike all recriminations, angers, and despairs. 
The son was only too eager to see the sunny half of life, 
and the father knew enough of its storms not to wish to 


166 Two Marriages. 

imbitter it to himself or his boj by one unnecessary 
pang. 

The plan of emigrating to Canada, which country, 
with a sad shrinking, Mr. Garland substituted for the 
more distant New Zealand, was carefully gone into by 
him, and he found, from Keith’s full acquaintance with 
all its chances, difficulties, and advantages, that the lad’s 
bias thereto had been very strong — strong enough to 
make his future more hopeful than had at first appeared. 
To none of his son’s schemes did the parson make objec- 
tion, not even to his plan of raising money for himself. 
His father’s assistance the lad never asked, nor did Mr. 
Garland offer it. He thought it best not. It gladdened 
him, amid all his pain, to sea Keith so thoroughly and 
honorably independent. Perhaps the frantic plunge he 
had made, blindfold, into all the anxieties and responsi- 
bilities of manhood, might shake him out of his boyish 
thoughtlessness — act upon him with the stimulus of a 
cold bath, and brace his energies for the real business of 
life. 

The father earnestly hoped so. Young as Keith 
looked, with his round, rosy, beardless cheeks, and his 
curly hair, there was a firmness and earnestness in the 
lad’s expression which Mr. Garland had not perceived 
before, and which comforted him amid all his heavy 
jCare ; for he knew, of his own knowledge, how life is 
never hopeless, and how the good God can make all 
things, even trials such as this, to work together for good, 
if we work also with Him, and in His own righteous 
way. 

So, befpre going to rest, all was settled so far as w^ 


Two Marriages. 167 

then possible, for there was no time to be lost. The best 
way to avoid scandal was to escape it. 

Keith mentioned hesitatingly that he knew of a ship 
that was to sail in a fortnight; and, short as the time 
was, Mr. Garland decided that he had better go. 

“We can end all college matters easily enough,” added 
he, “and all the easier that you will have your father 
here at hand.” 

“I know that,” said Keith, contritely and gratefully. 
Then, after a pause, “But about her?” 

“ Do you mean your wife ?” 

“ Yes” — and it was pitiful to see the cloud of repug- 
nance and annoyance that came over the young hus- 
band’s face — “ I can not take her with me ; you must 
see that, father. It would be quite impracticable.” 

“I never had the slightest intention of suggesting 
it.” 

“ Then what can be done with her? She has no home 
— absolutely not a relative living — thank goodness for 
the same ! And she is so young, so pretty ! You don’t 
know how pretty she is, father I” 

The father half smiled, and then told how he had seen 
her at Valley Farm. With a certain feeling not unlike 
compassion, he recalled the fresh young face and rather 
attractive manner of the creature, now cast aside as a 
burden and encumbrance, more than half despised. 

“Valley Farm — that is an idea,” cried Keith, eagerly. 
“ Perhaps Mrs. Love would take her back — not as a 
servant, but as a boarder — that is, if you did not object 
to her being so near you. She would not intrude ; she 
will be very humble, poor thing ! And at least it would 


168 Two Marriages. 

give her a decent, respectable home. Do you consent, 
father ?” 

“ No !” Mr. Garland replied, not immediately, but after 
a long pause, during which Keith waited patiently, with 
an aspect of dreary humiliation. “My son’s wife can 
have but one home — either his or mine. Go to Canada, 
as you desire, for two years, and either send for her there, 
or earn enough to return and settle in England. In the 
mean time I will take your wife back with me to the 
parsonage.” 

“ Oh father! oh my good, good father!” 

For the second time the young man fell on his knees 
— on his very knees — before the parent, who had given 
him something better than mere life — the love and pa- 
tience which helps one to live it ; who had been to him 
at once just and merciful; like the Father in Heaven, as 
all parents should try to be to all their children. 

Mr. Garland did not speak, only leaned over his son 
and patted his head, while two tears — the rare, pathetic 
tears of old age — stole down his cheeks. But Keith 
wept Uke little child. 


Two Marriages, 


169 


CHAPTER Y. 

Euston Square terminus in the dim dawn of a win- 
ter morning — naj, before the dawn; for the gas-lamps 
were still burning here and there along the platform, 
where a little knot of people — porters, and passengers, 
and passengers’ friends — were assisting at the depart- 
ure of the early train for Liverpool. It happened to be 
one of those oftenest chosen by emigrants, of which the 
greatest number necessarily leave either from this station 
or Waterloo. You can easily detect these sad, outward- 
bound folk from ordinary passengers, even were it not for 
their heterogeneous heaps of luggage — not common lug- 
gage, but masses of property, which plainly speak of leav- 
ing home “ for good.” Ah ! is it, can it ever be for good? 
Huge packages of amorphous character, canvas bags, 
heavy sea-chests, and smaller boxes marked “Wanted 
on the voyage,” show plainly that few of them are ever 
likely to return to England. And opposite the line of 
second and third class carriages — sometimes first-class, 
but seldomer ; first-class is more accustomed to keep its 
feelings under control — hang groups, mostly of women, 
some crying, loudly or quietly, as their natures may be ; 
some silent, with bleared and swollen faces, that seem to 
have wept all tears dry, and settled into sheer exhaiis* 
tion. They, and the men too, have a look of having 
been up all night — a long night of forced composure or 


170 


Two Marriages. 


parting anguish, terrible as death. But the men carry it 
off far the best, either with a miserable hard stolidity, 
that has something savage in it, or else with a false jocu- 
larity ; it is chiefly the women who break down. 

“ You see, father, there are other folk bidding good-by 
to old England as well as I,” said one young passenger 
— a second-class passenger he was, although quite a gen- 
tleman to look at — “ other folk who look as if they had 
not slept much last night, as I own I didn’t.” 

“ Nor I,” said Mr Garland. 

The parson was walking slowly up and down, leaning 
on his son’s arm. All was over and done; Keith had 
quitted college, and, through the father’s protecting care, 
quitted it without any outward exposure. They had 
been three days in London making flnal arrangements. 
Now the very last day — the last hour — of parting had 
arrived. Even the ticket was taken, and the rugs and 
other impedimenta packed into the carriage; nothing 
was left to do or say. No need for aught but the few 
last words, which in such circumstances never will come, 
or come as the merest commonplaces. 

“We have found our lodgings very comfortable, as I 
hope your hotel has been,” observed Keith ; “ and it 
was very kind of you to get them for us. The landlady 
said she knew you long ago.” 

“ Not me, but your mother, who once befriended the 
woman. She always did contrive to help every body — 
your mother, I mean.” 

“ I know that,” said Keith, softly. 

“ Is your wife well to-day ? Did you leave her toler- 
ably composed ?” 


171 


Two Marriages. 

“Yes, she is a good girl — a very good girl. She 
would not trouble me more than she could help. She 
sat up all night helping me to pack, and would have 
come with me to the train, but I told her you might not 
like it.” 

Mr. Garland was silent. 

“ But she will be ready at the lodgings any hour you 
please to name, or she will meet you at the railway sta- 
tion, whichever you prefer. Shall you start for Imme- 
ridge to-day ?” 

“ Possibly ; I am not quite certain. Hark ! was not 
that the bell for departure?” 

“ Ho, the five-minutes’ bell.” 

The old man clung to his son’s arm, leaning heavier 
and heavier, though he still firmly planted each foot on 
the ground, and walked with head erect and tearless 
eyes. Looking at him, Keith felt, for the moment, that 
he would have given all his hopes in life, every prospect 
of worldly advantage, every indulgence in that frantic, 
youthful passion misnamed love, to have staid behind, 
and cheered and solaced the few remaining years of his 
dear old father. 

He was sorry he had said so much about his wife; and 
the few words more he had meant to say, begging that 
when they did meet — for Mr. Garland had not seen her yet 
■ — he would be kind to her, and put up with her many 
shortcomings, faded entirely out of the young fellow’s 
mind. It was one of those sad cases in which a man can 
not, as the Scripture ordains — and as, under certain ex- 
ceptional circumstances, a man is bound to do — “leave 
father and mother, and cleave jut^to .to vWife” .Here 


172 


Two Marriages, 


there was in truth no wife to cleave to, no vestige of 
the real marriage of heart and soul, which alone con- 
stitutes “ one flesh husband and wife, sufficient each to 
each. Poor Keith — if he ever looked into the future ! 
But he did not — he dared not. 

All he felt was — with a pent-up grief choking him at 
the throat, and a bitter remorse gnawing like a wild 
beast at his heart — that in a minute or two more he 
should have parted from his father — his good father, 
who had done every thing in the world for him, who 
had been both father and mother to him ever since he 
was born. That, for all he could tell, he might never 
again behold those venerable white hairs, that dear fa- 
miliar face — withered indeed, but pleasant and fresh to 
look on as that of a young girl — pleasanter and dearer 
far, as now seemed to Keith, than that pretty red and 
white face which had so taken his foolish fancy, and for 
which he had sacrificed and suffered — ay, and caused 
others to suffer — so much. 

“Oh father!” he cried, in exceeding bitterness of soul, 
“ I wish I were not going away from you ! Tell me — at 
this last minute — shall I stay ?” 

And at that final moment the father paused. Paused 
to consider, not his own feelings — they could have given 
an easy solution of the difficulty — but his son’s good. 
He ran over rapidly all the arguments which, during 
many a solitary walk, and many a weary, wakeful night, 
he had carefully weighed; all the exigencies of the fu- 
ture — the bitter, perhaps fatal future, which Keith had 
brought upon himself The same reasons which held 
good then, did so now. No momentary outburst of emo- 


173 


Two Marriages. 

tion could set them aside. The plain common sense of 
the matter was, that the youth and his girl-wife — so mad- 
ly, so unsuitably allied — were better parted. That the 
safest chance to make a man of the one, and a woman 
fit, or at least less unfit, to be his wife, of the other, was 
to part them — for a time. Of their separation little 
harm could come. Keith was fast bound, and would 
keep constant to his wife — if only from conscience and 
self-respect; nay, he was perhaps safer far away from 
her, where he could only remember her prettiness and 
her love, than if perpetually jarred upon and irritated by 
those fatal deficiencies which he already felt — and his 
father could see that he felt — only too keenly. 

No, Keith must go. It was better for him that he 
went. 

Of himself, and his own life to come — that short, short 
vista, out of which all the brightness now seemed faded 
— the parson did not think much. He remembered only 
his own seventy years and his son’s twenty, with per- 
haps half a century more yet to run. No, not a chance 
must be left untried of redeeming the past and softening 
the future. Keith must go. 

“My boy,” he said, “I am glad you said that; I shall 
not forget it. But I do not wish you to stay. When a 
man has put his hand to the plow, let him not look back. 
Go to Canada, and do your best there, like a brave young 
fellow as you are — as I would wish my son to be. Go ! 
and I will try to keep alive and hearty till you return.” 

“Of course you will 1” answered Keith — fiercely almost 
and when he spoke the departure-bell was heard real- 
ly ringing. 


174 


Two Marriages. 

Father and son turned face to face, and then grasped 
hands, in the tight, silent grip with which men express 
— or conceal their feelings. 

A minute more, and where the busy train had been 
was an empty space — a few porters hurrying away to 
other work, or sharply calling “This way out” to the 
knot of women left weeping on the platform, and one 
old man who stood, not weeping, but leaning heavily on 
his stick, and gazing, in a sort of abstraction, upon the 
long black serpent, with its white-coiling breath, that 
went puffing and snorting away, first slow — then faster 
— faster — till it disappeared into the dim distance, carry- 
ing with it the delight of his eyes for twenty years. 

Yes, Keith was gone — quite gone now. The old man 
had lost his only child. 

There must have been something in the parson’s as- 
pect which told his sad story, for one of the porters, 
roughly beginning to order him from the platform — as 
they did the poor sobbing women — stopped, and said 
civilly, 

“ This is your way, sir. Shall I get you a cab ?” 

“ Thank you.” 

But, on trying to walk, Mr. Garland felt so feeble that 
involuntarily he put out his hand for support. 

“Sit you down here, sir, and I’ll find you a cab in two 
minutes.” 

It might have been two or ten, he could not say, for 
he felt so utterly bewildered and weary, when he was 
roused by a light touch on his arm, and saw a young 
woman standing at the end of the bench — a young 
woman — scarcely even a “young person,” as the in- 


Two Marriages. 175 

termediate phrase is, and not a “young lady” by any 
means. 

“ If you please, Mr. Garland, I be here, sir.” 

The strong west-country accent, the humble manner, 
like a servant’s, and the dress — a mere servant’s dress 
also — were sufficient, even if she had not called him by 
his name, to inform the parson who she was — his 
“ daughter,” Charlotte Garland. 

Exhausted as he was, all the blood seemed to rush to 
his heart, rousing him out of his stupor, and bringing 
him back at once to the bitter reality of things. He 
turned — to examine sharply — he tried hard that it should 
not be unjustly — this girl, who had proved such a fatali- 
ty to him and his. 

She was like — and yet unlike — what he had remem- 
bered of her. Her face he could not see — she had a 
thick veil on ; but her ungloved hands, not coarse now 
— sickness had wasted and whitened them — were shak- 
ing violently. Nevertheless, the voice in which she ad- 
dressed him was composed, and not unsweet, even to the 
parson’s most sensitive ear. 

He rose and gave her his seat. “ I believe — I can not 
be mistaken — ^you are Mrs. Keith Garland?” 

“Yes, sir.” 

“ Are you here alone?” 

“ Quite alone.” 

She said it half inaudibly, but very quietly, without 
any of the torrents of tears, the noisy demonstrative 
grief of the women around, which was what Mr. Garland 
had somehow expected. And when she lifted up her 
veil he saw, not the pretty, rosy girl who had worked so 


176 


Two Marriages. 


much woe, but a thin, sickly^ooking creature, who was 
evidently doing her utmost to use a woman’s self-control. 
There was a fixed repression in the small and close-sat 
mouth ; a mute, restrained, unappealing sorrow in the 
heavy eyes, which touched him in spite of himself 

She waited for him to speak again, but finding he did 
not, she said, still in the same humble tone, 

“Beg pardon, sir, for coming up to ’ee, but I thought 
you might miss of I, and that would gie ’un a deal more 
trouble.” 

As she spoke Mr. Garland winced terribly. He could 
not help it. He, so sensitive to small refinements, how 
should he endure constant association with this girl, how- 
ever harmless and even affectionate she might be ? 

“ I thought you were safe at your lodgings,” said he, 
abruptly. “ What did you come here for ?” 

A foolish, nay, a cruel question, as he saw next minute, 
but the girl did not resent it; and though her features 
twitched and quivered, she did not cry. 

“I couldn’t help coming, just to see the last of him; 
he’s my husband, sir. But he didn’t see I : I took care 
o’ that.” 

“Where were you, then?” 

“Just behind that lamp. I saw you and him a- walk- 
ing together, up and down, such a long time — oh ! such 
a long time ! And then you bid him good-by, and he 
got into the carriage.” She faltered — broke down a lit- 
tle. 

“ Poor girl !” said Mr. Garland, taking her hand, which 
he had not yet done ; and as he did it, he was conscious 
of a momentary warmth of heart toward this forlorn 


177 


Two Marnages. 

creature, scarcely more than a child, thus strangely left 
to his charge, and to whom the law, if nothing else, had 
given the external title of his “ daughter.” 

Charlotte did not respond in any equal or filial way. 
Her limp, pallid hand just touched his and dropped away 
again. She was evidently terribly afraid of him. 

The civil porter came up with the information that a 
cab was waiting. 

“We must go now,” said Mr. Garland. “Cornel” 
He paused, considering what to call her — what he ought 
to call her — this young woman, who, however he felt 
toward her, was his son’s wife, and must be treated as 
such. Then, with an effort, he said, “ Come, Charlotte.” 

She obeyed with the humble, deferential air which 
was to him so painful, and yet, perhaps, the contrary 
would have been worse. He tried to think so — tried to 
hope the best. As she sat beside him in the cab, he 
made several attempts at ordinary conversation, showing 
her the London streets they passed, and so on ; but she 
- seemed quite stupid, either with grief or shyness, and 
only replied in monosyllables ; so he took refuge in cov- 
ertly observing the pretty face. Beyond question it was 
very pretty, with almost a Greek profile, only less inane 
than those correct outlines usually are — dark eyes, and a 
quantity of rich blue-black hair. But there was the 
servant’s bonnet, gown, and shawl, tawdry with violent 
contrasts of color; the servant’s gloveless hands; and, 
above all, the unmistakable servant’s air — half awkward, 
half shy, in the presence of an acknowledged superior. 

He could make no more out of her than this until the 
two were sitting face to face — he pointed to a chair, or 


178 


Two Marriages. 

she would have remained standing — in the little lodging- 
house parlor. With both of them, the first passion of 
parting had subsided; the wrench was over; and let 
their hearts bleed inwardly how they might, outwardly 
they had to go back to the duties of the common work- 
^»day world. 

The first thing that startled them into this was the 
landlady’s bringing up breakfast; it was scarcely nine 
o’clock, and yet it seemed already the middle of the day. 

“We’ll wait a bit,” said Charlotte, hesitating; perhaps 
Bhe remembered the day when she gave the parson his 
tea at Valley Farm. Perhaps he remembered it too; 
but these things must not be remembered. 

“No, we’ll not wait, if you please. Will you give me 
some breakfast ?” 

He pointed to her seat, assuming his own opposite; 
and so they sat down together, as father and daughter-in- 
law, and took the initiative step in their new life. 

Their meal ended — and it gave to both a certain sense 
of ease and comfort, as if the first and worst difficulty 
bad been got over satisfactorily — the parson spoke to 
her, trying to do it gently and kindly, in the manner he 
used toward his parish school -children. 

“We must now consider our plans, my dear. You 
know, of course, that you are coming back with me to 
Tmmeridge?” 

“ Yes ; he told me so.” 

“And are you satisfied with the arrangement?” 

“Eh, sir?” 

“Do speak out,” said Mr. Garland, a little sharply. 
“ I should be sorry to take you home with me if you did 


Two Marriages. 


179 


not approve of it. I do not wish to treat you as a child, 
or as — as an inferior person.” 

Charlotte Garland opened her great eyes — childish 
eyes they were, almost; there was no badness in them, 
and a certain appealing simplicity — a “Don’t hurt me!” 
sort of look. Evidently she did not half understand 
what was being said to her. But she looked up into the 
kind face of Keith’s father, and understood it better than 
his words. 

“ Yes, sir. I’d like to go with you, and thank you kind- 
ly,” said she. 

“ Very well ; suppose we go home to-day ?” 

And then he remembered what a changed home he 
was returning to — changed in what it had lost, and far 
worse, for he had grown used to Keith’s absence, in the 
additional burden it had gained — a burden which, to an 
old man of his solitary and settled ways, would be ob- 
noxious every hour of the day. And yet it was but 
duty — as this Christian man read his duty — therefore it 
must be done. 

Nevertheless, the more he pondered over it the more 
perplexing it grew, not merely in its larger aspect, but 
in the minutiae of things. He had written to his house- 
keeper, saying merely “ that Mr. Keith was married, and 
was going to Canada, leaving his wife at the parsonage till 
his return.” This intelligence, in all its naked brevity, 
would, he knew, soon speed all round the parish, perhaps 
even to Valley Farm, where the truth would be at once 
guessed. How it would finally come out at Immeridge, 
or whether the whole story was not already public, Mr. 
Garland could not tell, and took no means of learning. 


180 


Two Marriages. 

He was a thoroughly honest man, this Parson GTar- 
land. His candid soul, clear as daylight itself, had no 
fear of coming to the light. Those poor shams — so com- 
mon that they cease to be thought mean, and are called 
by pretty names — such as “keeping up appearances,” 
“wearing a good face before the world,” or even that 
last and saddest sham of all, euphuistically translated as 
'‘^laver son Huge sale chez luii" all these forms of elegant 
hypocrisy were to him unknown and impossible. He 
never did, consciously, what he was ashamed of doing, 
and therefore never dreaded the world’s knowing that he 
did it. If he himself thought it right to take home to 
Immeridge Parsonage his son’s wife, what business had 
the world to meddle with the matter? 

He did not feel it necessary to advertise to all his 
neighbors who and what Mrs. Keith Garland had been 
— to bruit publicly his own private griefs and his son’s 
errors. But his silence was not deceit — he never tried 
to deceive any body; he was resolved, whatever hap- 
pened, he never would. That morbid dread of public 
opinion, which shrinks not so much from the thing it- 
self, whether misfortune, disgrace, or even crime, as 
from society’s knowing it, was not the form in which 
temptation came to Mr. Garland. It might have done 
once, for he was naturally very sensitive to love and 
hatred, praise and blame ; but time and his long solitary 
life had taught him better wisdom. To him — accus- 
tomed to live alone, face to face with the All-seeing Eye 
- — the stare, whether kindly or malign, of mere fellow- 
creatures seemed comparatively a very little thing. 

Still he was conscious of many perplexities that would 


181 


Two Marriages. 

arise from bringing Charlotte home as his daughter-in- 
law. The first one — a trivial and yet annoying thing — 
dawned upon him as she sat opposite to him, huddled 
up in the arm-chair which he had made her take, for she 
looked very pale and wan, though she made no com- 
plaint. 

It was years — twenty years since the parson had no- 
ticed women’s dress ; but he had an artistic eye, and re- 
membering what used to please him once in the only 
woman he ever admired — and yet she was not pretty — 
he saw at once that something was amiss in the un- 
doubtedly pretty Charlotte Garland. He could not ex- 
actly tell what it was, except that the flimsy cotton gown 
and gaudy -patterned shawl were very different from the 
unity of harmonious color, the decorous simplicity of 
shape, to which he had been accustomed, and by which 
an ordinary or even a plain woman can make herself 
lovesome, not to say lovely, if she chooses. 

Also there was that unmistakable something, or lack 
of something, which convinced him that when she came 
under the sharp eyes of Jane, the old servant — who had 
been servant to his wife — would discover at once that 
Mrs. Keith Garland was “ not a lady.” 

This, alas! was in degree inevitable; still, some ex- 
ternal amendment might be made, only he did not like 
to hurt Charlotte’s feelings by doing it. 

“ Excuse me,” he said, at last, “ but have you any 
other gown than this? It is scarcely warm enough for 
traveling.” 

“ So he said,” she always referred to Keith as “ he 
“ and that it wasn’t fit for me to wear now ; and he left 


182 


Two Marriages. 


me some of his money to buy clothes, and told me he 
would send me more by-and-by. I wasn’t to be a bur- 
den upon you, sir.” 

“ Poor fellow !” said the father, softly. 

“ I was always handy at my fingers, though I had no 
book-learning, please, sir,” pursued Charlotte, timidly. 
“ If I might go out and buy some stuff, I could make a 
Sunday gown for myself when I get home — I mean — I 
beg your pardon if I’ve said any thing wrong,” added 
she, in great confusion. 

“ No, my dear. Immeridge is your home.” 

“Thank’ee, sir,” with a return to the humble, servant- 
girl manner so terribly annoying to Mr. Garland. He 
struggled to conquer himself, however, and suggested that 
they should take the landlady into council, and before 
leaving London should spend Keith’s money, perhaps a 
little more — but he did not hint this — in supplying a 
suitable wardrobe for Keith’s wife. 

Charlotte caught at the idea, and whether for love’s 
sake or vanity’s sake — the not wonderful vanity of six- 
teen — she took, during three whole days, a world of la- 
bor and no little enjoyment over her new clothes. She 
also accommodated herself to them so well, that when 
she was dressed in them, a fellow-traveler who resigned 
his place to her in the railway carriage, spoke of her as 
“ that young lady.” 

Fortunately she talked little during the journey ; in- 
deed, the parson had been relieved to find, during their 
three days’ association together, that familiarity with him 
did not make her grow more voluble, but rather more 
silent ; also, that when he talked to her, which he forced 


183 


Two Marriages. 

himself to do as much as possible, she sometimes seemed 
to notice the difference in their speech, and try, blunder- 
ingly, but eagerly, to correct her own. Seeing this, he 
once or twice corrected her himself in some glaring er- 
ror of grammar or pronunciation, which reproof she took 
meekly enough, and did not make the mistake again. 

Still the ci-devant Charlotte Dean could by no possibil- 
ity be exalted into a heroine of romance. She was just 
a common servant-girl, or seemed so, to the parson, who, 
in criticising her, had to contend not only with person- 
al pain, but with all the prejudices of his class, and the 
sensitiveness of a nature peculiarly alive to all that was 
graceful and delicate, or the contrary. His only hope 
was, that in these three days he saw nothing wrong 
about Charlotte, nothing actually coarse, or wicked, or 
unwomanly ; and then she was so very young. She 
must have been a mere child — too childish to have 
learned any thing very bad — when she came under the 
strict guardianship of Mrs. Love, of whom, however, she 
seldom spoke, or in any way reverted to her former life. 

Nor did Mr. Garland. He covered it over, and left it 
with the Judge of all. 

Nevertheless, as, with this young woman sitting by his 
side, he traveled through the fair southern counties, 
along the very same route which he had once taken — 
(it seemed sometimes only a day, and sometimes a life- 
time ago) — with another, and oh I what a different wom- 
an, whom he was also bringing home to the same home, 
it might well be forgiven the old man if, through all his 
compassion, he felt a sensation of indescribable, hopeless 
pain. 


184 


Two Marriages, 


But, happily, ere they reached their journey’s end, 
Charlotte’s small strength broke down. He had not 
looked at her for a good while, and then he saw that she 
had quietly leaned her head in the corner of the fly, and 
fainted. And when the carriage stopped at the Parson- 
age gate, and he tried to help her out, she, equally quiet- 
ly, dropped down on the damp doorsteps, and had to be 
carried off at once up stairs, and put to bed by Jane like 
a baby. 

It was a strange, sad coming home of Keith’s wife, but 
it was the best thing that could have happened. And, 
after an hour of great uneasiness, spent in wandering up 
and down the house, and lingering outside the long-va- 
cant “ guest-chamber,” where the sick girl lay, Mr. Gar- 
land was astonished to find how entirely he had forgot- 
ten every thing except anxiety and compassion for her. 

“Well?” said he, eagerly, to Jane, as she came out of 
the room. 

Jane cast down her eyes, determined not to meet her 
master’s. 

“ She’s better, sir — she’s only tired like — she’ll be all 
right to-morrow.” 

“I am glad to hear it. She has had a long journey; 
and it was hard parting with her husband, of course.” 

“Of course,” echoed Jane, and made no farther re- 
mark or inquiry. 

Mr. Garland was going into his study, but, struck by 
the tone, and more by the after silence, he turned back. 
He felt how much depended upon Jane, who had had 
sole control of the house for twenty years, and who, 
though sharp at times, was not a bad woman in her way. 


185 


Two Marriages. 

“ You’ll be very good to her,” said he, half appealingly. 

Jane was still silent. 

Then Mr. Garland perceived his mistake. He said, 
looking full at her, and assuming the parson’s “high” 
tone, which, gentle as he was, all the parish were a little 
afraid of — 

“My daughter-in-law is only sixteen — too young to 
take the management of my house. Besides, she has yet 
to finish her education. Therefore, Jane, you will keep 
your place as housekeeper, and all will go on as usual — 
for the present. But I trust to you to see that she has 
every comfort, and that all proper attention and respect 
is invariably paid to Mrs. Keith Garland.” 

Jane lifted her eyes at last, inquisitively and sharply, 
and fixed them on her master. In them he saw — and 
hardly knew whether he was glad or sorry to see — that 
she was fully aware of every thing. 

Mr. Garland had expected this — at least he thought he 
had, and that he had prepared himself for it, as being a 
result inevitable in a country parish, where every body 
knows every body’s business ; for, let Mrs. Love be as 
kindly silent as she might, she could not chain the 
tongues either of the farm-servants or the neighbors. 
Of course Jane knew — every body knew — the whole 
story by this time. But when he met this cruel fact 
blank and plain; when his old servant looked him in 
the face, not with disrespect certainly, but with a sort of 
half-pitying, half-angry amazement, without one word of 
sympathy or regret for Keith’s departure, or of curiosity 
over Keith’s young wife, the parson felt it hard. 

He said nothing — what was there to say? He had 


186 Two Marriages. 

borne much sorrow, but the first shame of his life was 
come upon him now. 

“Be the young woman to stop here, sir?” 

“ My son’s wife will certainly stop here,” replied Mr. 
Garland, with a dignity that silenced Jane. And then 
feeling that — cruel as the explanation was — it was his 
duty, both as a man and a clergyman, to explain himself 
sufficiently, even to his own servant, so that neither she 
nor any one would mistake him, or suppose that he 
glossed over wickedness, paltered between right and 
wrong, he said, “Jane, you must never again speak in 
that tone of Mr. Keith’s wife. It was a marriage with- 
out my knowledge or consent, but it was the right and 
best thing under the circumstances. They are both very 
sorry, and God may have forgiven them ; I have, Jane,’’ 
he added, almost entreatingly, for he felt how critical the 
position was; “don’t judge her, only be kind to her.” 

Jane looked as if she doubted the evidence of eyes and 
ears — ^looked at her master until big tears gathered and 
fell. She wiped them off with her apron, and said, in a 
husky voice, 

“ Well, I never seed such a man as you — never ! Yes, 
I’ll do it, sir. I’ll be kind to her, but it’s only for your 
sake, mind that, master. May the good Lord reward 
you, Mr. Garland !” 

And Jane went hastily away, more overcome than she 
had ever been seen since the day when she stood with 
Keith, a new-born baby, in her arms, weeping her heart 
out beside her dear mistress’s coffin. 

Mr. Garland went slowly up stairs, not into his study, 
but his own bedroom. He was very weary, and yet 


187 


Two Marriages. 

composed. The worst was over ; there was nobody else 
to be spoken to, or to speak to him, on this subject. 
And Keith was gone. He had suffered as much as he 
could suffer, and felt strangely at rest. 

If any eyes had watched him — but there were none to 
watch, at least none visible to mortal ken — they might 
have seen the old man shut his door, seat himself in his 
arm-chair by the window, and, undrawing the curtain, 
gaze out upon the church and church-yard, where, cra- 
dled in moonlight, the white grave-stones slept. He sat 
a long time, and then went quietly to bed, his last con- 
scious thought being, with a sense of repugnance tinged 
with involuntary tenderness, that now, for the first time 
for so many years, there slept under the Parsonage roof 
another Mrs. Garland. 


188 


Two Marriages, 


CHAPTER VI. 

In spite of Jane’s confident assertion that her patient 
would be all right to-morrow, it was several weeks be- 
fore the expectant village, or indeed any body except 
Jane and her master, saw Mrs. Keith Garland. 

Though only a servant, poor Charlotte had a heart in 
her bosom ; her power of self-control was very great for 
one so young ; but, after the need for calmness was over, 
she “ fretted above a bit,” as Jane expressed it, for her 
husband. Instead of rising from her bed, and parading 
before all Immeridge her honors and glories as Parson 
Garland’s daughter, the poor thing turned her face to the 
wall ; did nothing but weep all day long, and fell into a 
sort of low fever, or “ waste,” which, had it been done 
out of policy, was the wisest thing she could have done 
at that crisis. For old Jane’s kindly nature was touch- 
ed by the mere act of tending her; she forgot all that 
Master Keith’s wife was or had been, and thought of her 
only as a poor sick child, who depended upon her — Jane, 
for every thing ; so that between these two women, who 
otherwise might have become naturally antagonistic, the 
one obtruding and the other resenting their painfully 
false position, there grew up a true and not unnatural 
bond, which contributed very much to the peace of the 
Parsonage household. 


189 


Two Marriages. 

The parson, too, in the daily half-hour visit which he 
compelled himself to pay to his daughter-in-law’s room, 
talking to her about trivial things, or perhaps, as was his 
habit in sick-rooms, reading to her a few verses out of 
the Bible, became familiarized to the pale face that he 
found lying on the pillow, or propped upright in the 
easy -chair by the fire. Its prettiness pleased his eye; 
its silent smile as he entered moved his heart; he felt 
glad this poor young creature had not been left a cast- 
away upon the cruel world. 

By degrees his duty- visit ceased to be a trouble and a 
task : he found himself looking forward to it with some 
slight interest, wondering what he should talk to her 
about that day, and what she would say in return. Not 
that she ever said much ; she seemed to have an instinct 
that it was safer to be silent, or perhaps, in the long con- 
fidential hours which she and Jane necessarily spent to- 
gether, she got to know more of her father-in-law than 
he suspected, or than she ever would have done had they 
been thrown together very much at first ; so, either from 
prudence or timidity, she rarely did more than smile her 
welcome, and pay to the old man the tender flattery of a 
mute listener. Still, she supplied him with an interest, 
an object of thought and care; he scarcely knew how it 
was, but the Parsonage felt less empty; and even the 
small domestic fact of having to send up to the invalid 
her portion from his daily meals made them seem a little 
less selfishly solitary. 

For his life outside, it went on just in its ordinary 
round. His parishioners were none of them of that rank 
who could take upon themselves the liberty of intimacy ; 


190 


Two Marriages. 


nobody questioned him even about his son, and not a 
soul in the smallest way adverted to his son’s wife. 
Sometimes he was glad of this, and then again he invol- 
untarily resented it, and it inclined him the more com- 
passionately to the poor pale girl, who lay so quiet in 
the little room up stairs, harming nobody, and of scarce- 
ly more importance to any body than if she already lay 
“ under the mools.” 

Thus things went on, and seemed as if they might go 
on forever, until the quiet of the Parsonage was stirred 
by an event — a momentous event always — the first let- 
ter from over the sea. 

Keith wrote to his father at some length, very explic- 
itly and satisfactorily ; but to his wife was only a small 
note, inclosed in the other. Mr. Garland sent it up stairs 
at once, and followed it himself half an hour after, with 
his own letter in his hand ; for, amid all his pleasure in 
the long loving letter, which had a tone of thoughtful- 
ness and manliness quite new, the old man was touched 
with slight compunction that Keith’s confidences were 
all to his father. The thing was inevitable, and yet it 
was not as things should be. As he walked up stairs to 
his daughter-in-law’s room, Mr. Garland could not help 
sighing. 

Charlotte turned toward him with her customary smile, 
but this time it was not quite natural ; she had evidently 
been in tears. 

“Is not this good news?” said the old man, cheerily, 
and gave her his letter. Hers was lying open on her 
lap ; it seemed to consist of only half a dozen lines, writ- 
ten in large copper-plate hand, as you would write to 


191 


Two Marriages, 

a child. The parson felt almost sorry when he looked at 
his own long letter. “You see, Charlotte, all the busi- 
ness facts come to me; but would you care to read them? 
Perhaps you do not feel strong enough?” 

“Oh yes; but — I can’t. Please, sir, I haven’t learnt 
to read written hand.” 

Mr. Garland might have felt, for the hundredth time, 
that bitter sense of incongruity in this wife with whom 
unfortunate Keith had burdened himself for life, had it 
not been for Charlotte’s burning blush, which showed 
her own painful consciousness of the same. 

“ Never mind,” he said, kindly, “ I will read it to you. 
But your own letter.” 

“I couldn’t read it, and I thought you might not 
like my asking Jane to. Oh, sir, is he quite well? 
Has nothing happened to him? Is he glad he went?” 
added she, eagerly, while her lips quivered, and, despite 
all her efforts to prevent it, the tears came streaming 
down. 

“ My dear,” said the parson, deeply touched, “ keep 
quiet, or we shall have you as ill as ever again. Keep 
quiet, and you shall hear every word he says — you have 
a right; he is your husband.” 

“Yes, yes!” And for a minute the poor girl’s eyes 
brightened with love ; the rare unbought treasure which 
heaven can light up in a beggar’s heart or in a queen’s, 
but which once kindled, nothing earthly will ever quench 
— and Mr. Garland saw it. 

He silently extended his hand and held hers while he 
read aloud Keith’s letter. When he had done so, and 
talked it over a little, explaining any thing that he 


192 


Two Marriages, 

thought she was not likely to understand, he asked, hesi- 
tatingly, if he should read the other one. 

“Mine! Oh yes — if you would be so kind.” She 
had sat folding and fingering it, and now she gave it up 
with a sad, lingering look. Poor Charlotte 1 

“ You must not mind my seeing it, even if it is a love- 
letter,” said the parson, half apologetically. But there 
was no need; all the world might have read every line 
of Keith’s first letter to his young wife : 

“Dear Charlotte, — You will be glad to hear I am 
safe landed at Halifax, and shall shortly be on my way 
to the back woods of Canada. My father will tell you 
where they are, and all about them if you care to hear. 
I shall have to work hard, chiefly at farming work, which 
you know all about, though I hear farming is rather dif- 
ferent there from what it is in Old England. Still I can 
learn — and you will learn too, when I can fetch you or 
send for you. I hope you will be a good girl till then, 
and take care of jour health, so as to get thoroughly 
strong, for health is very much wanted out here. I hope 
to have mine, perhaps better than in England ; for other 
things it is of course a very great change. 

“ I write this large, hoping you may contrive to read 
it. Perhaps by-and-by you might manage to learn to 
write. Be as cheerful as you can, and be always dutiful 
and obedient to my dear father. 

“ Your affectionate husband, 

“ M. K. Garland.” 

Nothing more than this — and there scarcely could 


193 


Two Marriages, 

have been less; yet Charlotte seemed satisfied with the 
letter, and asked Mr. Garland to read it over again to 
her. 

“ Then I shall learn it by heart,” said she, simply ; 
and the old man felt it hard to meet the touching pa- 
tience of her eyes. Sinful as she was, she had been sin- 
ned against likewise. The wrong, for which no man can 
ever fully atone, had been done, and done by his son, to 
this poor servant-girl. 

He staid with her much beyond his customary half 
hour, sometimes talking, sometimes sitting silent, ponder- 
ing — not the questions of sin and forgiveness; he left 
that to heaven alone — but wondering whether, contrary 
to all his theories and habits, he was being taught how, 
in heaven’s sight, nothing is “common or unclean” — 
whether, by rare chance, Nature might not have put 
sense and intelligence under that broad, low forehead; 
sensitiveness and refinement in the always sweet-tem- 
pered, flexile mouth — whether, in short, though she was 
not born one, it might not be possible in time to make 
something like “ a lady” out of Charlotte Garland. 

At last he said, “ Charlotte, when you are stronger, you 
and I must have a word or two of serious talk. No, 
don’t look frightened. It is not to scold you ; the only 
fault I mean to find is that you will not get well fast 
enough.” 

“ Would you like me to get well, sir? I have some- 
times thought — well, it has been put into my mind — that 
—that—” 

“ Speak out — always speak out.” 

“ That you would rather — I know it would be better 


194 


Two Marriages. 

— Oh, sir, you know — ^you can’t help knowing — that it 
would be a deal easier for him if I died.” 

This outburst — and, alas! it was not altogether with- 
out foundation — quite overwhelmed Mr. Garland. Its 
very truth made it more difficult to answer. Nor had 
he expected it, though he had before noticed, with some 
surprise, that in this coarse, unlettered girl lurked the 
true principle of feminine devotedness — the faculty of 
seeing all things as they affected “ him,” and not herself 
at all. 

“ My dear,” said he, gently, “ you must not talk thus. 
Every thing that is past is past ; we must make the best 
of it. Instead of dying, suppose you were to come down 
stairs and make tea for me to-night ?” 

Charlotte looked amazed. “ Do you really want me ? 
Would you really like me to come?” 

For once in his life the parson told an untruth — or 
half a truth, disguising the rest — and answered briefly, 
“Yes, my dear.” But he forgave himself when he saw 
how Charlotte’s whole countenance brightened up. 

“ Then I’ll do it at once — this very night, sir. I can. 
I felt quite strong enough to come down stairs, only 
there was nothing to come down for.” 

“ How so ?” 

Charlotte hung her head. “Jane said I was not to 
help her in the kitchen, and there is no other work I am 
fit to do. Besides, I should only have been in your way 
■ — I know that.” 

Mr. Garland avoided answering the last half of her sen* 
tence. “You seem to have a grand notion of work, 
Charlotte,” said he. 


195 


“ I was brought up to it — it comes natural to the likes 
'o we and then recognizing her provincialisms, out of 
which she had struggled very much of late, at least 
whenever she talked with her father-in-law, the girl sud' 
denly blushed — Charlotte’s vivid, scarlet blush. 

“ By ‘ us’ you mean the people you were among be- 
fore my son married you,” said the parson, determined to 
shirk nothing, though he spoke both kindly and familiar- 
ly. “No doubt as Mrs. Love’s servant you worked 
hard enough, but there is no reason why an emigrant’s 
wife, and” — he paused — “ a clergyman’s daughter, should 
not work too, though in rather a different way ; and that 
is what I wanted to speak to you about. Shall I ?” 

“ Yes, please, sir.” 

“Would you not like to learn something? Learn to 
write, that you may answer Keith’s letters; to read 
books, that you may be a companion to him when he 
comes home. The Bible speaks — I read it to you only 
yesterday — of the wife being ‘ a help-meet’ for the hus- 
band.” 

“ What does that mean ?” asked Charlotte, humbly. 

The parson thought a minute, and then, trying to put 
his thoughts into as simple language as possible, retrans- 
lating himself as if it were for a child, he explained to her 
his own beliefs about marriage — his faith, and also his 
experience; how, though the man was the head of the 
woman, the woman ought to be the heart and right hand 
of the man — able to help him in his difficulties, to sym- 
pathize with him in all his aims, to comfort him in all 
his troubles. That outward differences or incongruities 
might exist, or might be got over in time ; but that this 


196 


Two Marriages^ 

inner union must be, else the marriage was a total fail* 
ure from beginning to end. And whether from the ex- 
cessively simple way in which he put it — all divinest 
truths are the most simple and most clear — or from a 
tender earnestness of manner which supplied what his 
words failed in, he saw that, somehow or other, Char- 
lotte understood him. When he ended she looked up 
wistfully in his face. 

“ I know it’s all true, sir. I knew I wasn’t a fit wife 
for him — but do you think I might grow to be ?” 

That doctrine of growth is one of the saving truths of 
life. When we reject it — when we judge people harsh- 
ly by what they were once, or hopelessly in looking for- 
ward to what they may be, we often make terrible mis- 
takes. We are far harder upon one another than God 
ever is upon us. We forget that in His divine plan — 
so far as we can see it — all existence appears to be an 
eternal progress, an ever - advancing development — un- 
less, as sometimes happens, the tide runs backward, and 
then the only future is infinite retrogression. Looking 
at our life — or lives — to come, after what seems to be the 
system of this one, we can imagine a just and merciful 
Being making possible to His creatures not only eternal 
life, but eternal death — never eternal punishment. 

But this is too solemn a sermon to come from such a 
very simple text as Charlotte Garland. 

If any one had seen her three months — well, say six, 
for they slipped away so fast that nobody counted them 
— from the day when she was brought home to Immer- 
idge, she would scarcely have been recognized. It is 
true, she was at the most impressible season of a worn- 


197 


Two Marriages, 

an’s life, when new habits are formed and old ones ef- 
faced with a rapidity incredible to those who have not 
seen such things. Besides — and the more her father-in- 
law perceived this, the more patient he grew with her — 
she was in addition to his own, under the teaching of the 
great master. Love. 

Without a doubt Charlotte was deeply attached to her 
husband. Perhaps something naturally refined in her 
had made her fancy a gentleman rather than a plowboy, 
and sorrow developed this fancy into the real love, which 
nothing can imitate and nothing destroy. Cold as Keith 
was, and neglectful — for, after the first letter, he rarely 
wrote again, but contented himself with sending messages 
to his wife through his father — unquestionably the poor 
wife loved him. Love guided the pen in her clumsy 
fingers over dozens of blurred copy-books ; Love wak- 
ened her with the lark, to pore over old spelling-books 
and Beading- made -easy’s — relics of the last Mrs. Gar- 
land’s governess-days — for hours before any one in the 
Parsonage was stirring. Love — and perhaps affection 
also, as for two hours daily she “ said her lessons” in the 
study like a child — softened her rough provincial tones, 
and made her try to speak good English, and to move 
about, not in her old floundering way, but with the sub- 
dued quiet which she knew the parson liked. And he 
knew that she knew he liked it, and why he did so ; for 
once, when the kitchen-door was left open, he overheard 
her saying in a deprecatory, grieved way, “ Please, Jane, 
I wish you would always tell me when I do these sort 
of things. I must be so unlike any thing he has ever 
been used to. And, oh ! couldn’t you tell me something 
more about poor Mrs. Garland ?” 


198 


Two Marriages, 

Nevertheless, human nature is human nature, and 
many a time the old leaven of servanthood would reap- 
pear. It was evidently a sore restraint to her to sit still 
in the parlor instead of being busy with Jane in the 
kitchen. At her lessons, though she learned easily and 
fast — as quick brains, left fallow till quite past childhood, 
very often do learn, which was a great mercy to the par- 
son — still she was often stupid through sheer awe and 
timidity, and her manner, when frightened, assumed that 
painful subserviency which annoyed Mr. Garland more 
than any thing. 

Their life together was not easy ; but things were less 
dreadful than the good man expected them to be; and 
sometimes he thought — when he had time to think about 
it at all — that he was scarcely so unhappy as his son’s 
miserable marriage ought to have made him. It had 
pleased God to take away his life’s hope ; to end all his 
dreams for his boy’s future; to put endurance for hap- 
piness, and a burden for a delight; and yet — and yet — 
he was conscious of many pleasures left. He could still 
enjoy the spring sunshine, and watch the cliff swallows 
return to their old nests from over unknown seas, and 
the primroses people in multitudes the little dell below 
Immeridge village, with scarcely less interest than he 
had done, season after season, when the seasons’ change 
formed the only epochs in his monotonous days. 

Then, too, during their Sunday walks, begun through 
a painful sense of duty to the solitary girl, and also to 
lessen the weariness of their sitting looking at one anoth- 
er in the Parsonage parlor throughout the whole blank 
Sabbath evening, he gradually took pleasure in showing 


Two Marriages. 


199 


her all these country things, and talking about them, and 
in watching their effect in the pretty face, which, though 
healthy enough now, never again offended his taste with 
the coarse Blowsabella beauty of Valley Farm. That 
mysterious impress which the mind makes upon the 
body, altering, refining, and sometimes altogether trans- 
forming, began to be very perceptible in Charlotte. Her 
features deepened in expression ; her slender figure ac- 
quired that grace of motion which is as important as 
grace of form, and her gentle, even temper lent to her 
voice, even though it did speak bad English, a certain 
musical tone (timbre^ as the French call it, and no other 
word is quite equivalent), which made grammatical er- 
rors pardonable. Not that she was in any way like 
Moore’s low-born heroine, of whom he wrote so enthusi- 
astically — 

“ Has the pearl less whiteness 
Because of its birth ? 

Hath the violet less brightness 
For growing near earth ?” 

Thomas Dean’s child was neither a pearl nor a violet, 
but merely a very pretty young woman, whom Nature 
had accidentally gifted with qualities, physical and men- 
tal, which would have made her noticeable in any rank 
of life, and which, being cultivated, bade fair to lift her 
out of her own. One occasionally sees such persons — 
ladies’-maids, who have more of “ the lady” in them than 
their mistresses ; and graceful gentlewomen, whom, meet- 
ing in society, one hears with astonishment were once 
barefooted mill-girls, whom some honest, romantic master 
educated and married. And though such cases are but 


200 


Two Marriages, 


remarkable exceptions to a most wise and righteous law, 
and the truth yet remains that the most insane act a 
young man can commit is an unequal marriage, still 
there is another truth behind it — that in this, as in every 
phase of human experience, exceptional cases will arise 
sometimes upon which we dare not sit in judgment, if 
only because they are exceptional. 

Nobody sat in judgment upon this case — at least not 
openly, probably because there was nobody to do it. 
Except Yalley Farm, where, with a certain instinctive 
hesitation, Mrs. Keith Garland did not attempt to go, nor 
did her father-in-law desire it at present, there was not a 
house in the parish likely to criticise the parson or the 
parson’s daughter so loudly as to reach their ears, for 
Immeridge village had the true English respect for its 
betters. And the Hall — which might have been found 
a difficulty, and, indeed, Mr. Garland looked forward with 
a vague dread to the squire’s return — was shut up this 
year since, instead of returning, Mr. Crux died, and the 
family property devolved to a cousin — a barrister in 
London. 

So, after the first hard stares in church, some finger- 
pointings as she left it, and, when she casually walked 
abroad in the village, visible hesitations between a broad 
laugh in the face of “ Lotty Dean,” or a decent courtesy 
to Parson Garland’s daughter — after all these things, 
which Charlotte herself did not seem to perceive, and 
the parson shut his eyes to, while Jane, that faithful serv- 
ant, fulfilled a servant’s true duty of holding her tongue 
entirely on her master’s affairs, gossip ceased to trouble 
itself about Mrs» Keith Garland, Time went on, and it 


Two Marriages. 201 

was already a year since that dreary day when Mrs. 
Love had come into Mr. Garland’s study, and, as he 
thought, destroyed his peace forever with her terrible 
tale. Only a little year, and all things had smoothed 
down, as they do so wonderfully, when we cease to fight 
against Providence, but simply do our best, and let Prov- 
idence fight for us. 


202 


Tivo Marriages. 


CHAPTER YII. 

It was early spring — Easter week, indeed — and Mr, 
Garland sat writing his Easter sermon with his study 
window open, inhaling the odor of bursting sweet-brier 
leaves and of double Russian violets : there was a bed of 
these just underneath, sprung from a single root which 
Mrs. Garland had planted; and in this sheltered nook, 
under the mild southern climate, they had flourished so 
as to overspread the whole border. The parson could 
generally pick one or two every week all winter through : 
he put them in a wine-glass on the desk, when, however 
faded they looked, Jane never ventured to touch them ; 
nobody did. Even in spring, when the violets became 
plentiful, nobody quite liked to gather them from this 
bed ; so they bloomed and withered in peace, pouring 
their scent in at the study window like a fragrant cloud 
of invisible love. 

The old man often stopped in his writing to drink it 
in, delighting himself in it, as he did in all delightsome 
things. Perhaps if heaven had made him very rich, or 
very prosperous, or very happy, in this world’s happi- 
ness, he might have been something of a Sybarite, and 
therefore it was better that things were as they were — at 
least he often thought so. Still he felt, and thanked God 
for it, that even to old age he had kept the keen sense of 


203 


Two Marriages. 

enjoyment, especially in Nature’s luxuries. Thus spring 
was just as delicious to him now as the spring-days of his 
youth, perhaps affecting him with a higher and more 
chastened delight; for then it had brought visions of 
things never to be, and now it stirred up in him no 
earthly longings at all, but a peaceful looking forward to 
what the return of spring mysteriously foreshadows — 
“the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting.” 

He was alone, for, Charlotte’s daily lessons being over, 
she had gone as usual into the garden, where she was 
very fond of working, and where her labors had of late 
almost superseded his own. It was good for her, since it 
gave her plenty of active, open-air occupation — occupa- 
tion with her hands; for Charlotte had one great defi- 
ciency in the making of a lady, or, at least, a fine lady — 
she hated being idle. And it was very difficult to find 
her enough to do. She could not study all day long, and 
though she now read fluently enough to enjoy books, still 
she liked best story-books, novels, and such like, which 
did not abound in the parson’s library. Though she did 
some house-duties, she was not the house-mistress, Mr. 
Grarland thinking it wisest, during the two years she 
would be with him, not to put her above his faithful 
Jane. Nor had he as yet given her any parish work, 
neither Sunday-school teaching, she being only a learner 
herself, nor district- visiting, where her former equals 
might naturally resent her coming among them in a dif- 
ferent character. His conscience soon told him that, for 
the present, the very difficult position of Keith’s wife 
was made least difficult by her being kept in a state of 
comparative isolation — shut up within the Parsonage 


204 


Two Marriages. 

domains like Eve within the garden of Eden. Often 
when he watched her moving about as now, and saw 
what a pretty creature she daily grew, he felt thankful 
that he had had the power and the will so to shelter her, 
and glad that her secluded life left no chance for any 
tempting devil of the world to do harm to Keith’s girl- 
wife, so mournfully neglected. Alas ! the parson felt it 
was so ; that more and more was poor Charlotte felt to 
be a burden by the young husband whose love had been 
the mere selfishness of passionate youth, not true love 
at all. 

Keith’s letters came, very long, dutiful, and loving, to 
his father, but sending only a line or two, or a message, 
to his wife; and though he had plunged bravely and 
heartily into his new life, and was prospering well, never 
reverting to his return home or to Charlotte’s joining 
him in Canada. The parson’s heart grew sad and sore, 
nay, a little angry. He did not love his daughter-in- 
law ; love with him was a plant of very slow growth ; 
but he liked her with the tender liking that a good man 
can not but feel toward a creature wholly dependent on 
him, and who never consciously offends him in word or 
deed. There was no romantic affection shown on either 
side, but she was a good girl, and he had the strongest 
sense of pity for her and responsibility toward her. He 
did not now feel his work done and wish to die. He 
prayed rather to be kept sound in body and vigorous in 
mind for a few years longer, that he might work on, or 
live to see the dark future unfold itself. 

He said nothing to his son of either his angers or mis- 
givings ; he knew that compelled love is more fatal than 


205 


Two Marriages, 

hate ; but he wearied himself with plans to keep Char- 
lotte from fretting. She did look sad and grave some- 
times when Keith’s letters came ; and, above all, he tried 
to keep her fully employed. 

“I wonder,” he thought, “how young women in gen- 
eral employ their time — those three Misses Crux, for in- 
stance ; for the new squire and his family had appeared 
at church the Sunday previous, and the parson had call- 
ed at the Hall, as in duty bound, on the Monday morn- 
ing. 

He compared Charlotte, as she moved about the lilac 
bushes in her gray merino gown and straw hat, with 
these stylish London damsels, in good looks, and in a 
certain simplicity of costume, which, after considerable 
struggles, she had attained to; he fancied Keith’s wife 
had rather the advantage. But he sighed when he 
thought of the nameless graces of ladyhood, to his deli- 
cate perceptions so indispensable; the quiet dignity of 
speech and mien, the repose of perfect self-possession, the 
noble simplicity which, however perfect it may appear 
to others, always sees for itself an ideal beyond any 
thing it now is, or can ever attain to. Alas ! all these 
things would, he feared, be hopelessly wanting in Mrs. 
Keith Garland. 

But this Monday morning, while his perplexed mind 
was turning over all the ways and means for her im- 
provement, he was summoned to the parlor, where was 
the overwhelming apparition of the very ladies he had 
been uneasily meditating upon as forming such a con- 
trast to his daughter-in-law. 

Their personality did not improve upon nearer view. 


206 


Two Marriages. 


for Mr. Garland was a gentleman of the old scliool, com 
pletel j unused to the lively, not to say fast style of mod- 
ern young ladies. The three Misses Crux, with their 
voluminous draperies, their masculine jackets, and tiny 
hats, upon which a whole bird with glass eyes sat and 
stared at beholders, were no nearer his ideal woman than 
Charlotte was. Yery incongruous they looked in the 
old-fashioned room, its decorations unaltered for twenty 
years, where they poked about, admired the old china, 
the fading embroidery, the valuable antique engravings, 
seeming determined, with their mother, a mild and un- 
impressive person, to make themselves as much at home 
as if they had been Mr. Garland’s neighbors all their 
lives. 

“ What a charming house !” 

“ The very picture of a country parsonage !” 

“And you live alone here, Mr. Garland? A charm- 
ing old bachelor life. Oh no ! I remember now you are 
not a bachelor. But what a sweet, quiet life it must 
be!” 

“It is very quiet,” said he, answering all the three 
girls at once, for they all spoke at once, and wondering 
what he should say to them next; but they soon saved 
him that trouble. 

“We shall find the Hall quiet too after London, for 
papa means to live here all the year round.” 

“ Oh, indeed 1” replied the parson, with a slight shiver 
of apprehension, he hardly knew of what or why. 

“ And we hope, Mr. Garland, that the Parsonage and 
the Hall will prove the best of neighbors, for all other 
neighbors are so far off. You must dine with us — 


Two Marriages. 207 

musn’t he, mamma? — at least once a week, if only out 
of charity.” 

“You are very kind;” for, under the rough demon- 
strativeness, he could perceive a certain frank kindliness 
for which he was not ungrateful. 

“Come, then, what day will you give us? Next Sun- 
day?” 

“ I have never in my life dined out on Sunday. Not 
that I condemn others for doing so, but still it is not my 
liking nor my habit,” said the parson, gently. 

“ I beg pardon, I forgot ; Sunday is so usual a visiting 
day with us in London ; but perhaps in the country it is 
different What week-day, then? Fix your own day, 
and we will send the carriage for you at seven.” 

Mr. Garland’s hesitating reply was stopped by an ex- 
clamation from the youngest and manliest Miss Crux, 
who had placed herself at the window, with her hands in 
her jacket pockets, and her mouth looking as if it would 
excessively like to whistle. 

“Bless me, if there isn’t the prettiest girl I ever set 
eyes on ! Your daughter, Mr. Garland?” 

“ No, my daughter-in-law.” 

“ Is she married — that young thing actually married ? 
And where’s her husband ?” 

“My son is in Canada; he will return shortly, and 
meantime has left his wife with me. She is, as you say, 
very young, only just past seventeen. May I offer you 
some cake and wine. Miss — Miss — ” 

“Beatrice is my name — otherwise Bea — sometimes 
degenerating into B,” said the young lady, archly, though 
the parson’s manner would have “ shut up,” to use her 


208 


Two Marriages. 

own phraseology, any less forward damseL “But tell 
me more about your daughter; for, though I am ugly 
myself, I do like pretty girls. It’s lucky you keep her 
close here, or every young fellow that saw her would be 
falling in love with her. I’m half in love with her my- 
self — I vow I am,” added this feminine “young fellow,” 
on whom the old man looked with undisguised amaze- 
ment, as she stood tossing her short, curly hair, and rub- 
bing her hands, evidently enjoying his bewilderment. 

“ Bea, for shame ! You are so ridiculous,” observed at 
last the silent mother. “ My dear sir, I hope you will 
let us have the pleasure of being introduced to Mrs. Gar- 
land.” 

“Mrs. Keith Garland,” corrected the parson, slightly 
wincing, and then stopped, puzzled what to reply to this 
request. 

Here was a conjuncture which he had never foreseen 
— never even thought about. To receive Charlotte un- 
der his own roof — to bear with her — to like her if he 
could — at any rate, to put up with her, and to be kind 
to her — that he had undertaken^and accomplished ; but 
to introduce her into society as his son’s wife, either for- 
cing her upon his friends with all her antecedents openly 
acknowledged, or bringing her in surreptitiously, with 
her previous history concealed — as for Keith’s sake, he 
felt bound to conceal it if possible — this was a position 
which had never before suggested itself to his simple 
mind. A most critical position too, full either way of 
great difficulties, and yet he must decide instantly, and 
his decision might affect the poor girl’s whole future 
life. 


209 


Two Marriages. 

He trembled; he felt himself visibly tremble before 
all these inquisitive women, who might know — how 
much or how little he could not possibly divine ; but no ! 
their manner showed that they knew nothing. Ought 
he to tell them ? 

While he asked himself this question, his difficulty 
was summarily solved. 

Charlotte, who had been at the other end of the gar- 
den, gathering flowers to replenish the beau-pot in the 
grate, came in, ignorant of visitors, and suddenly opened 
the parlor door. Bareheaded, her hat hanging down be- 
hind, her hands full of daffodils and flowering currant 
blossoms, yellow and red, her cheeks and lips rosy with 
health, her eyes smiling over the one delight of her sim- 
ple life — her successful horticulture — 

“She stood — a sight to make an old man young.” 

Seeing the room full of ladies, she drew back in the 
extremest confusion. 

There was no alternative now. “ Come in, my dear,” 
said the parson, rising. “ Mrs. Crux, this is my daugh- 
ter-in-law — Mrs. Keith Garland.” 

Involuntary Charlotte began her courtesy, but stopped 
and turned it into a bend, as Jane had tutored her — a 
gesture not exactly awkward, but so painfully shy and 
uncomfortable that Mr. Garland, out of pure pity, bade 
her “ take her flowers away, and come back again pres- 
ently.” So, without her having once opened her lips, 
the door closed again upon that charming vision. 

“Keally, Mr. Garland,” said the youngest Miss Crux, 
“ your daughter-in-law is the very prettiest person I ever 


210 


Two Marriages. 

saw — a regular country belle. I say, girls, it’s lucky for 
us that she’s off the course.” 

“Eh?” said the puzzled parson. 

“Lucky, I mean, that her name’s scratched off the 
books of the matrimonial race — that she’s already Mrs. 
Keith Garland.” 

The parson made no answer ; indeed, he was sore per- 
plexed. Like many another man, large of heart and yet 
very sensitive, he could meet nobly and grapple bravely 
with a grand moral difficulty, but the petty puzzles of 
daily and social life were quite too much for him. He 
needed a woman to save him from them or help him 
through them — such a woman as the wife he had lost, or 
the imaginary daughter who never came. For this 
daughter, well seeing he could do nothing, he attempted 
nothing, but waited in trepidation for her reappearance, 
determined to let things take their course, and act on the 
spur of the moment as best he could. However, Char- 
lotte never reappeared. 

The Crux party, after prolonging their visit to the ut- 
most limit that politeness allowed, let fall some sugges- 
tions about hoping to see her again ; but no effort being 
made by the host to gratify their curiosity, they depart- 
ed, merely leaving “kind compliments to young Mrs. 
Garland.” However, the same evening, before the par- 
son and his daughter had met or spoken together, there 
strode up the Parsonage garden a tall footman in livery, 
bearing an elegant missive — nay, two missives from the 
Hall, addressed respectively to “ Kev. Mr.” and “ Mrs. 
Keith Garland.” 

Charlotte took them herself to the study. She was in 


211 


Two Marriages. 

tlie habit of waiting upon him there with letters or mes- 
sages, and presented both to Mr. Garland. 

“Open yours, my dear,” said he, and watched her 
while she read, which she did slowly and carefully, first 
looking surprised and then exceedingly delighted, for it 
was an invitation to dinner at Cruxham Hall. 

“ Is the man waiting ? Tell him we will send an an- 
swer presently, or to-morrow morning, and then give me 
my tea, if you please, Charlotte,” for he wanted to fortify 
himself and gain time before he decided. 

Charlotte went away without speaking — she rarely did 
speak first to her father-in-law on any subject — and sat 
silent all the while he drank his tea, and read, or pre- 
tended to read, his three days old “ Times.” 

Poor man ! he was making up his mind, and it was to 
him a very troublesome business. He wished, as ever, 
to see the right, honestly and plainly, and then do it. 
By the sudden gleam of pleasure in Charlotte’s eyes, he 
perceived — what had not struck him before — that this 
lonely life, shut up in a country parsonage with only an 
old man for company, and lessons for recreation, debarred 
from the amusements of the class she sprang from, and 
not joining, nor capable of joining, in those of that to 
which she now belonged, was not the best sort of life for 
a young girl of seventeen — active, energetic, lively, pret- 
ty; and looking at her, more and more he perceived 
how excessively pretty she was. 

Hor, as she presided at the tea-table, did Mr. Garland 
notice any thing in her, either as to appearance or be- 
havior, so very different from ordinary young ladies of 
her age. In truth, though the old man would never 


212 


Two Marriages. 


have thought of this, it was impossible for any one, with 
common instincts or observation, to sit at the board and 
share the daily society of such a thorough gentleman as 
Parson Garland without acquiring in degree the outward 
manners of a lady. He noticed, as he had never done 
before, the great change in her; nor was his hesitation 
caused by the fear that as a companion she would be any 
personal annoyance to him, or would commit solecisms 
of good-breeding at the Hall dining-table any more than 
in the Parsonage parlor. 

Still, the question remained — the vital question. Had 
he any right to inflict upon the Cruxes, who were proba- 
bly acting in the dark, or upon other neighbors who might 
not be in the dark, association with one from whom they 
were sure to shrink, although they might endure her a 
while out of respect to his cloth and to him ? She was 
his daughter-in-law; but still she was once a common 
servant-girl, and — alas ! alas I if that had been all ! 

Charlotte,’’ said he, after watching her from behind 
his newspaper, trying to criticise her with the equal eye 
of a stranger, the result of which criticism was an amaze- 
ment, mingled with solemn thankfulness, that so little of 
her antecedent history was written in her face : a face 

— was it looking into his face that it had grown so? 

— gentle, modest, simple, and sweet. “Charlotte, my 
dear, what do you think about this invitation to Crux- 
ham?” 

“ Me, sir?” 

“ I think we ought to decline it.” 

“ Yery well, sir. You know best.” 

She spoke meekly, but a shadow of disappointment 


Two Marriages. 213 

crept over the pretty face. It was natural. She was 
only seventeen. 

“ I really do not see how we can go. You have no 
proper dress.” And then, ashamed of the flimsy ex- 
cuse, the good man added, “ Besides, to speak truth, 
Charlotte, as I always do, and I speak it not to hurt you, 
because you have too much good sense not to see the 
thing as plain as I do — ^you have never been used to that 
kind of society, and I doubt whether you would enjoy it, 
or feel at home in it.” 

“ Perhaps not,” with a little sigh, which prevented Mr. 
Garland from putting more harshly the other side of the 
matter, that the Hall society might not welcome her. 

“ But what do you wish yourself? Tell me plainly.” 

“ I hardly know. Yes I do,” continued Charlotte, pluck- 
ing up courage. “ I hope it isn’t wrong, but I should 
rather like to go. I have sometimes thought how nice it 
would be to meet people like the people in the books I 
read — real ladies and gentlemen, who are so good, and 
so beautiful, and so kind. I dearly like to read about 
them. How delicious it must be to live always among 
them !” 

“Poor little girl,” said the parson to himself. Simple 
as he was, he was not quite so simple as she. 

“ But, Charlotte, grand people are not always ‘ real la- 
dies and gentlemen and they sometimes do very unkind 
things. They might be unkind to you. I am afraid they 
would be. Would you feel hurt by that?” 

“ I don’t know. But, if I could still admire them, would 
it much matter what they thought of me?” 

The parson heard, and marveled at poor Charlotte’s in* 


214 


Two Marriages, 

stinctive leaping at that truth, the foundation of all hero- 
worship, all human devotedness, ay, even of religious faith 
— “ I love, I admire, I adore,” without reference to self at 
all. Equally he felt surprised at what a year had effect- 
ed in this girl — this mind once blank almost as white pa- 
per, simply by keeping it white, removing from it all bad 
influences, and letting the unconscious influence of daily 
companionship with nature, and books that were pure and 
true as nature do the rest. 

While, roused out of her ordinary silence, she thus 
spoke, there was such longing in Charlotte’s eyes, such an 
eager stretching out into “fresh fields and pastures new;” 
not the girlish craving for excitement, but the aspiration 
of a mind that was slowly opening, like the petals of a 
rose, to the mysteries of life, about which she was still as 
ignorant as a baby. Ay, in spite of all that had been, he 
was certain she was ignorant — and innocent too, in a very 
great degree. Such things, though rare, are possible. 

Another idea occurred to him. What if his Quixotic 
education of his son’s wife, shutting her out from all 
chance of harm, and filling her with ideal views of life, 
had lasted long enough, and it would be wiser to let her 
come into contact with human beings more real and tan- 
gible than the heroes and heroines of her story-books ? 
And she had been so good ever since she came to Im- 
meridge, so patient under Keith’s neglect, so obedient to 
Keith’s father, it was hard to deprive her of a little pleas- 
ure, the first for which she had ever seemed to crave. 

“ But, my dear, if we did go, what dress have you?” 

“ I could manage that,” interrupted she, eagerly. “ In 
every book I read, the young girls always go to their first 


215 


Two Marriages. 

party in white muslin, and I could make myself a white 
muslin dress in two days. And I have still a whole pound 
and more of the money he last sent me — that would buy 
it, and ribbons too. Oh, it would be so delicious !” 

The parson smiled. His judgment slumbered — he had 
not the heart to say her no. So he took that first step 
which always costs so much — took it unwillingly, but 
without much calculation of consequences, saying to him- 
self that it was “ only once in a way,” and that no harm 
could come. 

The same evening, two responsive notes, one written to 
dictation, and in Charlotte’s very best hand, which now 
was at least as good as that of most school -girls, were sent 
up to the Hall by Jane’s small assistant in the kitchen, 
who also posted a written order to the nearest market 
town for white muslin and pink ribbon. Then the par- 
son put the matter from his mind. The die was cast. 

When, on the appointed day and hour, he handed his 
daughter from the Parsonage door into the Hall carriage, 
it must be owned he was not ashamed of her. Her fresh 
and simple dress was very neatly made ; up to the throat 
and down to the wrists, for Charlotte did not seem to 
know that while women of the lower classes like their 
best gowns to be an extra covering, women of higher 
rank do just the contrary. She went, like Tennyson’s 
Lady Clare, perhaps copied from that original, for Mr. 
Garland had often seen her reading the book, 

“With a single rose in her hair,” 

gathered from the rose-tree which, by greatest care, she 
had made to bloom in the parlor as if in a hothouse. 


216 


Two Marriages. 

And though she had no gloves on, having apparently no 
idea that they were ever worn indoors, her hands had 
grown white and shapely, not unlike a lady’s hand, even 
though quite unadorned — except by the one plain gold 
ring. She fingered it nervously. Poor Charlotte I was 
she thinking of her husband ? 

Mr. Garland did not ask. In truth, he dared not rea- 
son about that or any thing else. He only told her “ she 
looked very nice,” at which she blushed into brighter 
beauty, and relapsed into silence. His mind misgave 
him, as it had done more than once that day ; but it was 
too late to draw back. 

Besides, why should he ? He was doing nothing wrong. 
If Charlotte were good enough for the Parsonage, she 
certainly was for the Hall. At worst, in taking her 
there, he was only going counter to social prejudices; 
but he infringed no moral law or sense of right. The 
Cruxes probably knew every thing about her by this 
time, or, if they did not, would soon learn, and then it 
would be at their own option to continue the acquaint- 
ance. 

Thus he argued with himself, and palliated one of the 
few weak things, and the only uncandid thing he had 
ever done in his life, determined that, if done at all, it 
should be done without shrinking. Yet even while do- 
ing it a sharp pain came across him ; a sense of the in- 
evitable price that all sin must pay — to be paid, alas! 
not only by the sinner, but by those belonging to him. 
Oh, if Keith had ever thought of that I 

When, mustering his courage, Mr. Garland walked into 
the splendid drawing-room with Charlotte on his arm, 


217 


Two Marriages. 

he could not help a certain relief at finding only stran- 
gers there — the Crux family, and some guests staying at 
the Hall. 

“We asked several of your neighbors — I suppose 
every body is one’s neighbor here, within ten miles — 
asked them specially to meet you and your daughter,” 
said Mrs. Crux, apologetically, “ but, unfortunately, they 
were all engaged.” 

“ Well, it’s their loss,” added Miss Beatrice, as she took 
hold of Charlotte with both hands, stared hard and ad- 
miringly into her blushing face, then gave her a resonant 
kiss, remarking, “ I beg your pardon, my dear, but I real- 
ly couldn’t help it.” 

Mrs. Keith Garland was then introduced to old Mr. 
Crux, a stout and bland gentleman ; to young Mr. Crux, 
a thin, small, fashionable youth, drawling in voice and 
lazy in manner ; and to various other people, the family 
or the visitors. They all talked so much and so fast 
that she could easily hold her tongue. She retreated be- 
hind her usual shelter of sweet, smiling looks, and almost 
total silence, even when she was paid the compliment of 
being taken down to dinner by the host himself, proba- 
bly under some misty notion that she was still a bride. 

The Cruxes had brought their easy London manners 
to their country dinner-table, in the dazzle of which it 
would have been easy for a more awkward person than 
Keith’s wife to have passed muster, and been only com- 
mented upon as “ very quiet.” Quiet she was, her voice 
being rarely heard save in monosyllables ; but her sweet 
looks spoke for her, and her excessive modesty and gen- 
tleness disarmed criticism, even if criticism had been at- 


218 


Two Marriages. 

tempted bj these gay, metropolitan pleasure-seekers, who 
were accustomed to take people as they saw them, with- 
out inquiring much into their antecedents. Charlotte 
was treated with great civility by both ladies and gentle- 
men; and it never seemed to occur to either that she 
was other than she seemed — an unobtrusive, pretty, si- 
lent girl, very shy, and very oddly dressed; but then 
that was not surprising, considering that, as she herself 
said in answer to Miss Bea’s question, she had spent all 
her life in these parts. Probably she was the daughter 
of some other country parson, who might not have been 
nearly as “ nice” as the old parson of Immeridge. 

Nevertheless, for lack of other entertainment, the 
youngest Miss Crux seemed determined to patronize the 
country damsel in the most alarming manner. She kept 
her under her wing all the evening, treating her much 
as an admiring young man treats a charming young 
lady; that is, in these modern days, when young men 
deport themselves not as humble knights and devoted 
swains, but as if they thought they did the young lady 
great honor by falling in love with her. She planned 
rides, walks, picnics on the sea-shore, and other amuse- 
ments, with the bewildered Charlotte, finally parting from 
her with every demonstration of the most ardent friend- 
ship. 

Of all this the parson noticed very little. Having 
seen his daughter-in-law fairly afloat, treated kindly, and 
looking happy, he devoted himself with his usual court- 
esy to spend the evening as pleasantly as might be, 
though wishing in his heart that he was safe beside his 


Two Marriages. 


219 


own study fire. He had lost the habit of society, as peo- 
ple do when they grow old in long seclusion. 

And as they drove home — still in the Hall carriage, 
for undoubtedly these Cruxes were very good-natured — 
he was so thoroughly wearied that instead of talking to 
his daughter he fell fast asleep. All he did was on bid- 
ding her good-night to hope she had enjoyed herself, and 
her looks answered the question at once. 

“ So,” thought the old man, still very sleepy, “ the 
evening is safe over, and no harm has come of it. I have 
been civil to my neighbors, I have pleased poor Char- 
lotte, and there is an end of it all.” 


220 


Two Marriages, 


CHAPTER yni 

The good parson was mistaken in his reckoning. 
That dinner of Cruxham Hall turned to be not an end, 
but a beginning ; which, like the beginning of strife, was 
“as the letting out of water.” For henceforward the 
Crux family, headed by Miss Beatrice, who governed 
them all, bore down in a torrent upon the peaceful Par^ 
sonage, and swept away Charlotte with them in a flood 
of friendship. 

This state of things came about so imperceptibly that 
Mr. Garland had no chance of taking any preventive 
measures against it, even had he been so inclined. Be- 
fore a week was over it was too late. That easy and al- 
most inevitable intimacy, which comes about in the coun- 
try when people live close enough to be meeting daily, 
and can not choose but meet, was fairly established be- 
tween the Hall and the Parsonage. 

Charlotte seemed to like it — passively, if not actively. 
She submitted to be led about by the ardent Miss Bea- 
trice as sweetly and silently as any pet lamb. For now, 
as always, her silence was her safeguard. And, to tell 
the truth, the fashionable Misses Crux were not gentle- 
women enough to tell that she was none. They patron- 
ized her — and she was the meekest possible person to 
patronize — they fell into a furore about her, and showed 


221 


Two Marriages. 

her off to their guests as “the parson’s pretty daughter;” 
they laughed at her gaucheries and mispronunciations, 
which they set down merely to “country ways.” In 
short, being used in their wide London experiences to 
catch strange creatures, and amuse themselves with them 
while the novelty lasted, they caught Charlotte, and tried 
to tame her, and play with her, and make entertainment 
out of her, very much as if she had been a squirrel, a 
bird, a guinea-pig, or any other temporary pet, which 
could serve to while away a dull hour, especially in the 
winter. 

They were forever sending for, or fetching her to the 
Hall ; taking her drives, walks, picnics on the shore, and 
sketching parties inland, all of which enjoyments they 
made her believe would be incomplete without the pret- 
ty face of the parson’s daughter. Also because, except 
herself, they had no other companions; the old families 
of the neighborhood seeming rather to ignore, or at least 
taking time to investigate, the new Cruxes of Cruxham 
Hall. 

So two or three weeks rolled by ; and this vehement 
friendship, though carried on under Mr. Garland’s very 
eyes, was scarcely noticed by him, or noticed only be- 
cause he saw Charlotte looked especially bright and 
happy whenever she told him — as, if questioned, she in- 
variably did— that she had been with the young people 
of the Hall. 

“You seem to like those Cruxes?” said he, one after- 
noon, when he left her, waiting in the garden, with her 
bonnet on, for an appointed walk with Miss Beatrice. 

“ Yes,” she answered, in her usual gentle and unde* 


222 


Two Marriages. 


monstrative way. Certainly Charlotte was not a pas« 
sionate person, which was, perhaps, all the better for 
Keith, or would be one day. ‘‘Yes, I like them; they 
are very kind to me.” 

So the parson thought he would let matters drift on. 
It might have been wrong, or at least foolish, but it was 
a weakness belonging to his character not to take deci- 
sive steps unless absolutely driven to them. 

Besides, this soft spring weather made him feel feeble, 
and conscious of his feebleness — gave him a solemn sense 
of how his years were narrowing down to months and 
weeks, which could not be very many, and might be 
very few. As he looked at the green leaves budding, 
all his longing was that, by the time they fell, Keith, 
taking advantage of the long holiday of a Canadian win- 
ter, might come over, as was his duty, to see his wife, 
and, finding her so changed, might fall in love over 
again with a new Charlotte, in which case their perma- 
nent residence in America, which, as his father saw with 
pain, Keith now drearily planned as the only future open 
to a young man whose wife was no better than a farm- 
servant, might never come about. They might settle in 
England — perhaps even near Immeridge — Keith finding 
work of some sort to help them, or help to keep them, 
till by-and-by he succeeded to his mother’s little income, 
a safe certainty which could not, in the course of nature, 
be very distant now. 

But as the old man thought of these things, calmly 
planning for and providing against the time when he too 
should be numbered among the innumerable multitude 

“Who have passed through the body and gone,’^ 


223 


Two Marriages. 

leaving their place free for a new generation, he felt no re- 
gret, rather a deep content, the purest content of all, the di- 
vine unselfishness of parenthood. If he could only see 
his child — nay, his children — for those whom marriage 
had joined together he did not dare even in thought put 
asunder — see them safe and happy together, how cheer- 
fully would he say Nunc dimittis and go home ! Thank- 
ful, above all, for one thing, that neither Keith nor Char- 
lotte would ever have to remember of their father one 
word, one act of harshness or unkindness. 

He strolled leisurely back to the Parsonage and went 
into his study, tired, indeed, but so peaceful that he was 
half annoyed when Jane came abruptly in to tell him 
there was a visitor in the parlor. 

One of the Cruxes, I suppose?” 

“Young Mr. Crux; and he’s been a sitting there with 
Mrs. Keith for the last half hour.” Jane said this with 
an air which implied that she was not entirely pleased at 
the circumstance. 

Neither was Jane’s master. Unworldly and unsuspi- 
cious as the parson was, he had a certain amount of com- 
mon sense. He had reconciled himself to the Crux ava- 
lanche, seeing it was of a purely feminine character, the 
male members of the family spending most of their time 
in London. But he saw at once that it would never do 
for a young man like Mr. Charles Crux to be hanging 
about the Parsonage, and holding tete-d-iUes with Keith’s 
wife. Weary as he was, he went immediately into the 
parlor. 

Nobody was there. The visitor had disappeared, and 
he heard his daughter-in-law’s steps overhead in her own 


224 


Two Marriages, 

room. There must have been some mistake, he thought ; 
so he waited till he could ask Charlotte about it. 

When she came down to tea he observed her sharply. 
She was pale — a little paler than ordinary, he thought — ■ 
but she was her usual gentle, composed self; and when 
he questioned her she answered without the slightest hes- 
itation or confusedness of manner. 

“Yes, sir, I had a visitor — Mr. Charles Crux.” 

“What did he come for?” 

“ He said, to bring an apology for his sister.” 

“ She did not come, then ?” 

“No.” 

“ And how long did the young man stay ?” 

“Half an hour.” 

It was cruel to suspect her ; besides, from the depth of 
his soul, Mr. Garland hated suspicion. Very often, it is 
the dormant evil in our own hearts which we are most 
ready to attribute to others. To continue his catechism 
would be, he felt, almost an insult, so he passed the mat- 
ter over, merely saying, 

“ Another time, my dear, send word by Jane that I am 
not at home. Gentlemen’s visits should always be paid 
to the gentleman of the family.” 

Charlotte was silent. 

Their tea-hour went by peacefully as usual, she sitting 
half hidden behind the urn, and Mr. Garland occupied 
with his book, when Jane came in with two letters, one 
for each of them. 

“ From the Hall, of course ! They make a great fuss 
over you, Charlotte,” said the parson, smiling. But when 
he opened his own note, the smile vanished. 


225 


Two Marriages. 

Mrs. Crux, who was used to write him the most cordial 
and long-winded of notes on every conceivable parish 
matter, “presented her compliments, and requested the 
honor of half an hour’s private conversation with tha 
Reverend William Garland.” 

The parson dropped the letter on his lap. A tremor 
ran through him ; Mrs. Crux must have discovered all. 

Jane was waiting, with her sharp eyes fixed first on one 
and then on the other ; but Charlotte sat immovable, with 
her letter lying unopened beside her. 

“Say to Mrs. Crux — no, stop I — I will write my mes* 
sage.” 

And he wrote slowly, that it might look like his stead- 
iest handwriting, though still it had the pathetic feeble- 
ness of his seventy years : 

“ The Reverend William Garland will not fail to wait 
upon Mrs. Crux immediately.” 

And then he turned his attention to his daughter-in- 
law. 

She still sat in her place at the tea-table ; but her col- 
or had quite faded out, and she was trembling perceptibly. 

“ Have vou read vour letter, Charlotte ?” 

“No, sir.” 

“ Will you do so, then?” 

For he felt it must be penetrated at once — faced at once 
— this something which had surely happened ; doubtless 
that which he ought to have foreseen would sooner or 
later inevitably happen — the discovery of all particulars 
concerning his son’s unfortunate marriage. 

“It is my fault — oh that I had been wiser!” thought 
he, with a pang of bitter humiliation — even dread. 


226 


Two Marriages. 

But tlie next minute he felt himself blush, not for the 
shame, but the cowardice. What could the Cruxes ac- 
cuse him of? He had done what he thought was right ; 
in a most sore emergency he had acted as he believed a 
parent should act before God and man, in taking under 
the shelter of his roof his son’s wife, who had led there 
for more than a year and a half a life as blameless and 
harmless as that of a child. 

He watched her reading her letter. It was not a pleas- 
ant letter, evidently, for her cheeks were burning and her 
eyes glowed with a flash — an actual flame, which he had 
never seen lighted in them before. 

Who writes to you, my dear?” 

“ Miss Beatrice.” 

“ What does she say ? May I read ?” 

Charlotte passed the letter across without a word. 

The parson, accustomed to ladies’ letters — precise, ele- 
gant, feminine, formal — of half a century ago, was alto- 
gether puzzled by this one, with its scrawling masculine 
hand and its eccentric phraseology : 

“Dear little Fellow, — I can’t come to you to-day; 
the maternal parent forbids. Hot that I mind her^ but 
she’d tell the governor, and there’d be a row. Indeed, 
there has been a precious row at home. Some county 
people called, and talked a heap of nonsense about you. 
But you were really married — weren’t you, my dear? 
Anyhow — never mind — you’re a jolly little soul, and I’m 
a fellow that thinks for myself on this and all subjects. 
So I told the maternal parent, and said I meant to stick 
by you. And Charley backed me up, which wasn’t much 


227 


Two Marriages. 

good, as he’s rather a loose fish, is Charley. Don’t you 
stand any of his nonsense, by-the-by. 

“ I can’t get out to-day, but I’ll meet you to-morrow, 
by hook or by crook. Hang it ! this grand blow-up is 
rather fun than otherwise — nearly as good as having an 
elopement for myself. Never you care, there’s a dear 
little soul. I’ll stand by you. Yours ever, B. Crux.” 

Mr. Garland read the letter — twice over, indeed, before 
he could properly take it in — then laid it on the table 
beside him, and pressed his hand over his eyes, trying to 
realize the position in which he stood, what he had done, 
and what he ought to do. Above all, what he should 
say, and how he should say it — to Charlotte. 

Pleasant and kindly as their intercourse had grown, 
there had never been between the parson and his daugh- 
ter-in-law the least approach toward intimacy. She was 
far too much afraid of him still; and on his side he 
shrank with a repugnance, even yet unconquered, from 
the occasional coarseness, though more of habit than of 
innate nature, which he could not fail to see in her, and 
which, in his ultra refinement, he perhaps saw plainer 
than most people. Except in the necessary civilities of 
domestic life, and the daily lessons, they rarely talked 
much, for he did not exactly know what to say ; and her 
replies, though sensible and to the point, were always as 
brief as possible. 

But now he felt that the ice must be broken ; that, 
somehow or other, confidence must be established be- 
tween them before they met and breasted mutually the 
impending storm. 


228 Two Marriages, 

For, in whatever shape it might come, he never thought 
of leaving her to breast it alone — this poor defenseless 
girl, left with the mere name of a husband to protect her 
— the mere memory of his love, and that a selfish love — 
to keep her heart faithful and warm. However Keith 
might act, it never once occurred to Keith’s father to cast 
her off ; not even to preserve untarnished his own good 
name, though well he knew that it was in peril. He 
could easily imagine all that might be said about him 
and of his conduct — for there is hardly any conduct 
which will not bear two interpretations, and no story that 
can not be told in two different, often totally different 
ways. Besides, his own conscience told him that in one 
point he had been weak to a fault. He had no right, 
without telling Mrs. Crux the whole story, to allow his 
daughter-in-law to visit at Cruxham Hall. 

Still, whatever she was or had been, she was now his 
daughter-in-law, his son’s lawful wife, sheltered by the 
sanctity and irrevocableness of marriage ties — ay, even 
such a marriage as this had been. As he looked at her, 
so young, so helpless, and with an air of innocence diffi- 
cult to believe in, and yet not impossible, for the facts of 
daily life sometimes show it possible for a girl, even with 
Charlotte’s antecedent history, to have instincts of virtue 
strong enough afterward to retrieve herself, and become 
an honest wife — as he looked, every chivalrous feeling 
in the old man’s nature rose up to defend her. He felt 
thankful that there was even an old man left to stand be- 
tween the poor girl and harm. 

He opened the conversation at once. 

“ Thank you, my dear, for permitting me to read your 


229 


Two Marriages. 

letter. It is not a pretty letter for a young lady to write. 
Do you understand to what Miss Beatrice refers?” 

“ I think I do. He told me.” 

“He? Who?” 

“ That — that villain .^” 

The fierce emphasis of her words, accompanied by such 
a glare in the soft eyes, such a clench of the hand, told 
Mr. Garland all — perhaps more than the truth. He rose 
in much agitation. 

“Do you mean Mr. Charles Crux? for it can not be 
any body else. Has he dared — Tell me what he has 
been saying to you.” 

Still she was silent. The hot blood flooded her face ; 
she seemed bursting with indignation, grief, and even a 
sort of terror ; but she did not reply. 

“ Charlotte, you must tell me. Eemember, I am your 
father.” 

Then Charlotte broke down. She hid her face in her 
hands, and her whole frame shook with the wildness of 
her weeping. 

Mr. Garland stood by, attempting to do nothing — in 
truth, because he did not know what to do. At last he 
laid his hand on her shoulder, and she looked up. 

“ Let me hear every thing. I ought to hear it, Char- 
lotte.” 

“ I didn’t mean to tell you, for it would only vex you, 
sir; besides, I knew I could take care of myself. But 
he is a villain I You must never let him inside these 
doors again. And I will never go to the Hall — never! 
And when you go out you will take me with you — oh, 
please do, sir 1 for he has met me once or twice, and said 


230 Two Marriages. 

silly things to me, though he never insulted me till to 
day.” 

“Did he insult you?” asked the parson between his 
teeth. 

Charlotte hesitated. She had spoken rapidly and ve- 
hemently, but now she hesitated. 

“ What did he say ? Speak out ! Don’t be afraid.” 

“lam not afraid, sir. He told me just what his sister 
hints at in this letter — that after thinking I was a young 
lady born, they found out I was only a servant — and — 
and other things; that his mother was very angry, and 
his sisters would never be allowed to see me again.” 

“I expected it. Any more?” 

“ Then he spoke — as I thought nobody would dare to 
speak to a married woman. He said my husband didn’t 
care for me, and would never come back to me — and I 
had better go away with him — him 

“ And what did you answer?” 

Charlotte sprang from her seat. If the parson had still 
doubts concerning her, he could have none now. 

“Answer? What was I likely to answer but one 
thing — that I hated him ! Besides, I was married. If I 
had not hated him, still I was married.” 

“And then?” said Mr. Garland — astonished, almost 
awed at the passion she showed. 

“ He laughed at me, such a horrid laugh, and I sprang 
to the door; he tried to hold it, but I pushed him away 
— I could have killed him almost — and I ran away up to 
my room, locked myself in, and— I don’t ;reinember any 
thing more, sir.” 

“ My poor girll” 


231 


Two Marriages, 

The parson held out his hand — his steadfast, blameless 
right hand, which had never failed a friend nor injured 
an enemy — held it out to the forlorn creature, who, her 
momentary excitement gone, had sunk down shame- 
stricken beside him. And, as soon as she had courage to 
lift her eyes, Charlotte saw him looking at her, with the 
only look that has power to draw sinners up out of hell 
and into heaven — the true father’s look, full of infinite 
pity, infinite forgiveness. 

“ Oh, I’ll be good. I’ll be good I” she cried, in the ac- 
cent and the very words of a child. “ Only take care of 
me, please, sir! Nobody ever did take care of me, or 
teach me. I didn’t even know how wicked I had been 
• — not then, but I do now. It’s no wonder people should 
treat me thus ; and yet they shouldn’t — they shouldn’t — 
for they were taught better, and I never was 1” 

“ Ay, that’s true 1” said Mr. Garland. And thinking 
of the young man, the cowardly libertine who had stolen 
into the Parsonage that day — of the young girl, no older 
than Charlotte, who had written such a flippant, worse 
than flippant letter — his heart burned with anger, and the 
poor sinner who still knelt weeping at his feet showed 
like a saint beside them. 

Still he made no attempt to justify her, either to his 
own mind or to herself. No pity, however deep, led him 
to palliate her sin, or to allow that it might be softened 
by extenuating circumstances till it came to be no sin at 
all. 

It was sin. Its very consequences proved it to be. 
Who could doubt this, looking at that pretty creature, 
who might have been almost like Wordsworth’s Lucy — 


232 


Two Marriages. 


“ The sweetest thing that ever grew 
Beside a cottage door” — 

who had already a marriage-ring on her finger, and waa 
awaiting a settled married home, with all outward circum- 
stances combining to make her happy? Yet there she 
crouched, hiding her face like the unhappiest, guiltiest 
woman living. “Conviction of sin” (to use that phrase 
so awfully true, but which canting religionists often twist 
into a hypocritical lie) had come upon her — whether grad- 
ually or suddenly, who could tell ? — and the secret shame, 
the hidden pollution, was worse to bear than any outward 
contumely. 

Nor could he help her — this good man, this minister of 
God, who knew what God’s Word says. He knew, too, 
what the hard world would say, and that it has- reason in 
its hardness ; for without the strict law of purity to bind 
society together, families and communities would all fall 
to pieces, drifting into wild anarchy and hopeless confu* 
sion. 

“ Charlotte,” he said, very kindly, but firmly, “ try and 
calm yourself if you can. It is a very serious position 
of affairs. We must look at all things quietly.” 

“Yes, sir.” 

She rose and resumed her seat. As he, and Jane too, 
had long since found out, Mrs. Keith Garland was no 
weak girl, to lay all her burdens upon other people. She 
could bear them herself, silently, too, if need be ; and in 
this instance, perhaps, the very sharpness of her anguish 
made her strong. Her sobbing ceased, and she sat in 
patient expectation. 

“ Here is Mrs. Crux’s letter to me,” said Mr. Garland. 


283 


Two Marriages. 

** There can be no doubt she had heard what I supposed 
ehe knew already, but which, had I been wiser, I should 
have told her myself before I took you with me to the 
Hall.” 

“ Did it disgrace you, taking me? If I had known it, 
I would never have wished to go.” 

‘‘I believe that. It was my fault. I ought to have 
seen things clearer, and met them — as we must endeavor 
to meet them now. Can you, Charlotte ?” 

She looked at him inquiringly. 

“I mean — can you bear me to speak to you plainly, 
as a father may speak — about things that hitherto I have 
left between you and that Father who knows you much 
better than I ever can.” 

Charlotte bent her head. “Thank you. Please 
speak.” Yet still Mr. Garland hesitated. It seemed so 
like trampling on a poor half-fledged or broken-winged 
bird. 

“I answered Mrs. Crux that I would go and see her 
to-night, and so I shall. She has some right to be an- 
gry. She was kept in ignorance of facts she ought to 
have known before I took you to her house. You must 
be aware, my poor Charlotte, that many mothers would 
not like their daughters to associate with you — that is, 
until they knew you as well as I do ; then, I hope — I am 
sure they would feel differently.” 

Charlotte looked up with a sudden gleam in her sad 
face, but the parson did not see it. He went on, speak- 
ing, as it seemed, more to himself than to her. 

“ Our past, in one sense, is wholly irrevocable. Wheth- 
er it be sin or only sorrow, we can not blot it out ; it 


234 


Two Marrmges. 


must remain as it is forever. But we can cover it over, 
conquer it, atone for it. And the present, upon which 
depends the future, lies wholly in our own hands. My 
poor girl, don’t despair. If I can forgive you, be sure 
God will, and then it matters little whether the world 
forgives you or not.” 

Thus talked he, arguing less with her than with his 
own mind the strait in which he found himself — this up- 
right, pure-hearted old man — against whom not a breath 
of reproach had been raised till now. 

“ What does it matter?” he repeated, as he thought of 
all that would be said to him and of him — many false- 
hoods, no doubt, but still grounded on the bitter truth 
that could not be denied, which he never should attempt 
to deny. “God is my Judge, not man. I will not be 
afraid. What harm can my neighbors do me ?” 

“Harm to you?” said Charlotte, anxiously. “Will 
people blame you? What for? Because you were good 
to me?” 

“I am afraid they will, my dear! But, as I said, it 
does not matter. Give me my hat and stick ; it is time 
I should be going to the Hall.” 

“Stop a minute, please; just tell me. What do you 
think will happen through their finding out this ?” 

“ Nothing very terrible,” replied the parson, with a 
faint smile ; “ only you and I are likely to be left alone 
together. Nobody will come to the Parsonage, and no- 
body will ask us any where. We shall be ‘sent to Cov- 
entry,’ in short.” 

“ And why ? Because ,of me?’* 

The parson was silent 


235 


Two Marriages. 

^‘Tell me, oh, please do!” and Charlotte’s voice was 
hoarse and trembling ; “ when my husband comes home, 
shall I be a disgrace also to him ? Will his friends take 
no notice of him because of me ?” 

Mr. Garland was sorely troubled. It was such a cruel 
truth to tell, and yet it was the truth, and she might 
have to learn it some day, perhaps from far unkinder 
lips than his own. Would it not be better to make her 
understand it now — the inevitable punishment that all 
sin brings — which in degree they both must bear all 
their life long — she and Keith — but especially she? 
Would it not be safer to make her recognize it, and be 
brave under it? 

“Charlotte, I will not tell you what is untrue. It 
would have been far better for my son, and I myself 
should have been far happier, if he had married a girl in 
his own station — married with my consent, openly, hon- 
orably, as an honest man and gentleman ought to marry. 
But we can not alter what is past. I accepted his wife 
simply because she was his wife. Since then I have 
learned' — yes,” holding out his hand — “I have learned 
to — to like her ; she is a very good and dear girl to me. 
And if the world should look down upon Keith on ac- 
count of his wife, never mind 1 Let his wife love him 
all the more — nobly, faithfully, patiently ; let her prove 
herself such a good wife to him that the world will be 
ashamed of its harsh judgment. And whether it is or 
not, there is only one Judge she need tremble before, and 
He is a Father likewise.” 

Charlotte leaned forward eagerly, but scarcely seejneqi 
po comprehend his worcjs^ 


236 


Two Marriages. 


“Yes, that is all good and all right, but it will never 
be. I shall not have strength to do it. I had much bet- 
ter do the other thing that I was thinking of.” 

“ What other thing?” 

“ To run away and hide myself — die if I could — be- 
cause if I died he would be free to marry again. He 
would soon forget me — every body would forget me — 
and I should cease to do any body any harm ! Oh ! I 
wish — I wish I could die !” cried she, breaking, for the 
first time, into a cry of actual despair. 

“Charlotte!” she started, recalled to herself by the 
stern reproof of his tone. “ To die, or even wish to die, 
before the Father calls us, is unchristian cowardice. And 
it is our own fault always if we do our fellow-creatures 
harm. It will be your own fault if, from this time, you 
are any thing but a blessing both to me and to your 
husband. We will talk no more now. I am going up 
to the Hall. Sit quiet here till I come back.” 

She obeyed without resistance, waiting upon him si- 
lently, in her usual humble and mindful way, to which 
he had grown so accustomed that he scarcely noticed how 
much she did for him. But now, while she was mechan- 
ically brushing his coat and smoothing out his gloves, it 
suddenly came into Mr. Garland’s mind — what if she 
should carry out her intention and do something despe- 
rate — as from former experience, and from the expres- 
sion of the dull, heavy, stony eyes, and the little resolute 
mouth, he knew she was quite capable of doing. 

“ Charlotte,” he said, looking back ere he closed the 
door, “ mind, I shall want you when I come back. Ee- 
member, whether any body else wants you or not, I do.” 

Charlotte turned away and burst into tears. 


Two Marriages. 


237 


CHAPTEE IX. 

Mr. Garland walked slowly from his own gate up to 
the Hall, which was not more than half a mile from the 
Parsonage. It was a clear starry night — light enough 
for him easily to find his way; so he hid his lantern 
under a bush and went on without it, to give himself 
more freedom for meditation. As he did so, he thought 
how often we purblind mortal creatures set up our petty 
lanterns, carry them so carefully and hug them so close 
that they make us believe all the rest of the world, within 
a yard of our own feet, lies in blackest darkness, and ob- 
scure for us altogether the broad light of God’s heaven, 
which, whether in daylight or darkness, seen or unseen, 
arche§ immovably above us all. 

The night sky, in its clear darkness, so thickly sown 
with stars, comforted the parson more than words can 
tell; for it showed him the large Infinite in contradis- 
tinction to his little finite woes, and it reminded him of 
that other life in the prospect of which he daily walked, 
and which made all perplexing things in this life grow 
level, simple, and plain. 

Before reaching the Hall — for, though it was so short 
a distance, he had proceeded slowly and with unusual 
feebleness — Mr. Garland made up his mind, that is, his 
conscience, as to how he ought to act. For the exact 


238 


Two Marriages, 

words he should say to Mrs. Crux, not knowing what she 
would say to him, nor what tone she meant to take to- 
ward him, he left them undecided, believing with a child- 
like simplicity of faith that now, as in the apostles’ time, 
when a man has the right and the truth in his heart, 
there is, under every emergency, a Divine spirit not far 
from him, which tells him what to say. 

The light from the drawing-room windows shone in a 
broad stream a long way across the park, but it did not 
look so cheerful as usual in the eyes of the old man, who 
was entering, for the first time in his life, this house — nay, 
any house — where he had the slightest doubt of his wel- 
come — a welcome combined of the reverence due to his 
cloth, the respect won by his personal character, and the 
warm regard which even strangers soon came to feel for 
one so gentle, unobtrusive, large-minded, and sincere. 
He had been so long accustomed to this universal respect, 
that the possibility of the contrary affected him with a 
new and very painful feeling. He had need to look up 
more than once to that quiet heaven which soothed all 
mortal troubles, and dwarfed all mortal cares, before he 
could nerve his hand to pull the resonant door-bell at 
Cruxham Hall. 

“Dinner is over, I conclude?” he said to the footman 
on entering. “Is your mistress in the drawing-room? 
Can I see her?” 

And he was mechanically walking forward when the 
man opened the door of the study — a small room close 
at hand, where every body was shown; that is, every 
body who came on business, and was not considered fit 
to be admitted into the family circle. 


Two Marriages. 239 

“ Mrs. Crux said, sir, that when you came you was to 
be asked in here.” 

“Very well; tell her I am waiting.” 

It was a trivial thing, but it vexed Mr. Garland more 
than he liked to own. It was the feather which showed 
which way the wind blew — a bitter, biting wind it might 
prove to be, and he was an old man. Why could he not 
have gone down to his grave in peace ? 

Many fathers bring discredit on their sons — that is, ex- 
ternally, though in righteous judgment no child ought 
ever to be contemned for the misdeeds of a parent; but 
the reverse scarcely holds. It is a much sadder thing for 
a father to suffer for the ill-doings of a son, especially as he 
himself is seldom held quite guiltless of the same. For 
the second time Mr. Garland asked himself bitterly, as he 
knew the world at large would ask (and in many cases 
justifiably too), whether he had not himself been some- 
what to blame in this dark shadow which had fallen 
upon his old age ? 

He sat down wearily in the great arm-chair whence 
for so many years the old Squire Crux had administered 
justice, and Mr. Garland, who was also a county magis- 
trate, had sometimes been called upon to assist him in 
difficult poaching or affiliation cases — the usual rural of- 
fenses, and almost the only ones that ever occurred at 
Immeridge. He remembered the very last one, and how 
he had judged it — not harshly, thank God ! How little 
he then thought that in a few months the same kind of 
sin might have been laid by his neighbors at, or at least 
near to, his own stainless door. 

After keeping him waiting many minutes — this, too, 


240 


Two Marriages, 

was sometliing new, and he noted it with sensitive pain 
— Mrs. Crux appeared. 

She was in her dinner-dress, the richness of which 
gave her a kind of adventitious dignity, as it often did ; 
the fat, weak, good-natured woman was one of those who 
take great courage from their clothes. As she closed the 
door behind her, and stood in the centre of the floor, all 
in a rustle of silk, she tried hard to look stately, distant, 
and commanding, but signally failed. The parson in his 
shabby coat, for he had forgotten to change it, was de- 
cidedly the more self-possessed of the two. He rose, 
bowed, but did not offer to shake hands, nor did she. 
Nevertheless, it was he who had to open the matter. 

“You sent for me, madam, that we might have a little 
conversation on a subject which you did not name, but 
which I can easily guess, from a letter written by your 
daughter to my daughter-in-law.’^ 

“ Beatrice has written ? Oh, dear me, what shall I do 
with her,” cried the mother, nervously; but Mr. Garland 
took no notice of the exclamation. 

“It is about my daughter-in-law, is it not, that you 
wish to speak to me ?” 

“ It is — it is ! Oh, Mr. Garland, how could you do it 
— you, a clergyman of the Church of England, and a 
gentleman of such credit in the county? I declare, I 
was so shocked, so scandalized, I could hardly believe 
my ears when Lady Jones told me.” 

“ What did she tell? Will you repeat the story ex- 
actly, and I will tell you if it is true, or how much of it 
is true.” 

But neither accuracy nor directness were special qual- 


241 


Two Marriages. 

ities of Mrs. Crux, especially when, as now, she was ob- 
viously puzzled and distressed. 

“Such a pretty girl — such a sweet, modest-looking 
girl. I could not have believed it possible. And you 
to have her residing with you, and even to bring her 
here to associate with my daughters ! Mr. Garland, I 
am astonished at you. You ought to be ashamed of 
yourself.” 

“ Madam,” he answered, with a touching, sad humili- 
ty, “ I am ashamed of myself, but it is not for the reason 
you suppose. It is because I had not the courage to 
state to you all the sad circumstances of my son’s mar- 
riage, and then leave it to yourself to judge how far the 
acquaintance you so wished was either suitable or desir- 
able. Not that I had any doubt of my daughter-in-law, 
or of your daughters taking any harm from association 
with her, but that, in her sad position, all acquaintance- 
ships or friendships ought to be begun with open eyes 
on both sides. Mrs. Crux, I was to blame. I beg your 
pardon.” 

The lady was disarmed ; she could not but be, at such 
gentle dignity. She looked sorry, and answered half 
apologetically, 

“ Well, on that principle, Mr. Garland, it’s little enough 
you know about us, though at least our position in soci- 
ety is unquestionable. But it is quite different with 
Mrs. Keith Garland, who I hear was a common servant- 
girl, at some farm near here where your son used to vis- 
it, and where, like all those sort of persons, she made a 
bait of her pretty face, and cunningly entrapped the poor 
boy to marry her.” 


242 


Two Marriages. 

“ Stop a minute,” said Mr. Garland. “ She did not en- 
trap him. The error was my son’s as much as hers. 
He felt bound in honor to marry her.” 

“ Why ? Goodness gracious, Mr. Garland, you don’t 
mean to tell me — ” She stopped aghast. 

The old man blushed painfully, agonizingly, all over 
his face. He saw at once that in his roused sense of jus- 
tice he had betrayed more than even Mrs. Crux had 
heard — the worst, the saddest thing of all, compared to 
which Charlotte’s being a servant-girl had seemed to him 
a light evil — so light that he had naturally concluded 
Mrs. Crux knew the whole story, and that the violent, 
almost insulting measures she had taken were on this 
account. For the moment he paused, repenting, but it 
was too late now. Besides, had he not come determined 
to explain, and to face the whole truth ; why should he 
dread it now ? 

“ Mrs. Crux, I do not in the least wish to deceive you : 
as a mother of daughters you have a right to every ex- 
planation, and I came here to give it. I should have 
done so long ago, only I thought Immeridge gossip must 
already have told you what is so painful for me to tell 
to a stranger. Still, I ought not to feel pained, for my 
daughter-in-law’s daily life speaks for itself as to what 
she is now ; so simple and humble, so good and true, that 
I have almost forgotten she was ever — ” 

The sentence died on the parson’s lips, for the cruel 
truth had never been put into words before. Still, he 
must utter it. 

“ She was, I grieve to say, not only a poor illiterate serv- 
ant-girl, but — my son seduced her before he married her.” 


243 


Two Marriages, 

“ What !” cried the lady, starting back in undisguised 
horror. “ And you were so misguided, so insane, as to 
let him marry her ?” 

“ Madam,” said the parson, as he too drew back a step, 
“ I am not accountable for the marriage, since I was un- 
aware of it till it was over. But the one thing which in- 
clined me to forgive my son was that he did marry her.” 

Mrs. Crux regarded him with the blankest astonish- 
ment. “I never heard of such a thing. That is — of 
course, such things happen every day ; we mothers of 
sons know that they must happen. It’s a sad, sad mat- 
ter, but we can’t help it ; we can only shut our eyes to 
it, and hope the poor lads will learn better by-and-by. 
But to view the case in this way — to act as you have 
done — I protest, Mr. Garland, it appears to me actual 
madness. What would the world say of you ?” 

“ I have never once asked myself that question.” 

And then, as they stood together — the old man and 
the elderly woman — for Mrs. Crux was over sixty, though 
she dressed like a girl in her teens — they mutually in- 
vestigated one another, with as much success as if they 
were gazing out of two different worlds. As in truth 
they were — the world of shams, and the world of realities. 

“ I am very tired — will you excuse my sitting down ?” 
said the parson, gently ; she had never yet asked him to 
be seated. “But I shall not detain you long; and after 
to-night the Parsonage will intrude upon the Hall no 
more. It never would have done so, save for the per- 
sistent attentions of your family, which I wish I had pre- 
vented earlier, for more reasons than this.” 

Mr. Garland suddenly paused, for again tie bad been 


244 


Two Marriages. 


led on to say too much. After mature deliberation, he 
had resolved — out of his dislike to any dis-peace, and be- 
cause no good could come from the revelation — to be si- 
lent respecting Mr. Charles Crux and his insolence. But 
the poor mother, made sadly wise, was also quickly sus- 
picious ; for she said uneasily, 

“ Please explain ; I insist on your explaining any other 
reason.” 

“ I would rather not, for it is one of those things which 
are best not even named. And it can never occur again ; 
for, by my daughter-in-law’s express wish, I shall keep 
my door closed henceforward to every member of your 
family.” 

“ Mr. Garland, surely — I saw Charley was a little smit- 
ten — ^but surely he has not been such a fool as to — ” 

“ I do not know what you call a fool,” replied Mr. Gar- 
land, indignantly, “ but I should give your son a much 
harder name.” 

“ Oh, you mistake,” said the mother, a little frightened. 
“ Young men are always taken by a pretty face. Char- 
ley likes flirting, especially with married women. He 
means no harm — and every body does it.” 

“ Which makes it no harm, I suppose,” said the par- 
son, bitterly. “But I, and happily my daughter-in-law, 
think otherwise. Since you have mentioned the subject, 
which it appears you were not quite ignorant of, will you 
^y to Mr. Charles Crux that if he ever dares to cross my 
threshold again — though I am an old man, I have a 
strong right hand yet — and — there might be a horsewhip 
in it ! I beg your pardon, madam,” added he, suddenly 
stopping, and reining in the passion which shook him, 


245 


Two Marriages. 

old as he was. “ In truth, I forbear to speak, because I 
am more sorry for you, as being mother to your son, than 
I am for myself, as the father of mine.” 

“Why, what difference is there between them? Or 
between your conduct and mine ?” 

“ All the difference between plastering over a foul ul- 
cer. and opening it boldly to the light ; ugly, indeed, and 
a grievous wound, but a wound that, by God’s mercy, 
may be cleansed and healed. All the difference between 
the sinner who hides and hugs his sin, thinking nothing 
of it, if only it can escape punishment, and the sinner 
who repents and forsakes his sin, and so becomes clean 
again, and fit to enter the kingdom of heaven — always so 
near at hand to all of us. Where, please God, I hope 
yet to see my poor boy, and that poor girl Charlotte too 
— ay, madam, even in this world.” 

Mr. Garland spoke as he had never meant to speak; 
but the words were forced into him and from him. 
They fell on deaf ears, a heart too narrow to understand 
them. 

Nevertheless, the lady moved uneasily, and regarded 
Mr. Garland with a puzzled air. “You talk in a very 
odd way ; but I suppose, you being a clergyman, it is all 
right — only please do not confound Mr. Keith Garland 
with Mr. Charles Crux. What your son may be I can 
not tell, but my son is quite correct in conduct always. 
He goes to church with his family — you might have 
seen him every Sunday. He visits where his sisters vis- 
it — and I can assure you we are exceedingly particular 
in our society. Beatrice is the only one who takes up 
with doubtful people ; she laughed at this dreadful busi* 


246 


Two Marriages, 


ness — I mean at Mrs. Keith Garland’s having been a 
servant. And even if she were told every thing, very 
likely she would not care for that either ; young people 
are getting such very queer notions nowadays. Oh, you 
don’t know what a mother’s anxieties are, Mr. Garland,” 
cried the poor woman, appealingly, and glancing at the 
door, as if she expected every minute to have their inter- 
view burst in upon. 

“Pray give yourself no anxiety on our account,” said 
Mr. Garland, rising. “I have said all you wished to 
hear, and all that I had to say ; now let me assure you 
that this visit of mine will be the last communication be- 
tween the Hall and the Parsonage.” 

Mrs. Crux looked infinitely relieved. “It is best, a 
great deal the best — thank you, Mr. Garland. And yet” 
— her good-nature overcoming her, or else being touched 
in spite of herself by the picture of the solitary, feeble 
old man going out into the dark to meet the obloquy 
which Mrs. Crux felt certain must inevitably rest on 
every body who was “dropped” by Cruxham Hall — “ I 
don’t wish to do an unkind thing. Perhaps, since no- 
body knows, you might still come here — coming by 
yourself, of course.” 

“ Thank you ; but it is quite impossible. You felt it 
necessary to protect and to uphold the dignity of your 
daughters — excuse me if I feel the same regarding mine. 
All acquaintance must henceforth cease between our two 
households.” 

“ But as to Beatrice,” said Mrs. Crux, who, like most 
weak women, when she saw a thing absolutely done, 
usually began to wish it undone — “what am I to say to 


Two Marriages. 247 

Beatrice? She has taken such a fancy to young Mrs. 
Garland.” 

“ Let her find another protdgee, and she will soon for- 
get my Charlotte.” 

“ My Charlotte !” The word slipped out unawares — 
he was startled at it himself — but he did not retract it. 
And all the way home he thought of her tenderly — as 
good men do think, even of those that have caused them 
woe, when they themselves have had the strength not to 
requite pang for pang, and evil for evil. It is a true say- 
ing, that those against whom our hearts harden most are 
not those who have wronged us, but those whom we 
have wronged. 

Steadily and bravely, though without an atom of love 
in his heart, Mr. Garland had done his duty to his daugh- 
ter-in-law; steadily and bravely he had fought for her 
now — the poor girl — simply because she was a poor, 
defenseless girl. Now, when she was wholly thrown 
upon his pity and care; when not a door but his own 
was likely to be open to her; when even her husband 
neglected her, and shrank from coming back to England 
because it was coming back to her; the old man, who 
had in him that knightly nature which instinctively takes 
the weaker side — the good old man felt almost an affec- 
tion for Charlotte. 

When he saw by the glimmer from his study-window 
that she was still waiting there, and heard the front door 
open almost before he had fastened the clinking latch of 
the garden gate, a sensation approaching pleasure came 
over him. 

“ Well, my dear, I have returned safe, you see,” said 


248 


Two Marriages. 


he, cheerily. “It is all well over. We shall see no 
more of the Cruxes. You and I must be content with 
one another’s company. I can. Can you ?” 

Charlotte looked up and smiled — a smile the bright' 
ness of which was soon accounted for, as well as the in- 
difference with which she omitted all questions concern- 
ing the interview that had just before seemed so mo- 
mentous to them both. 

“ Look here, sir,” said she, drawing a letter from her 
apron pocket. “ This came directly after you had gone. 
What can it mean ? For, do you see, it is not by the or- 
dinary Canadian mail; the postmark is London, and 
there is an English stamp upon it.” 

“ Poor little soul, how well she loves him !” thought 
Mr. Garland, as Charlotte came hovering about his chair 
with a trembling eagerness of manner, and a brightness 
of expectation in her look. “You thought, my dear, 
that Keith might be in England, but it is not so. He 
dates as usual, you see ; this is merely sent by private 
hand, and posted in London.” 

“Yes, I understand.” And Charlotte sat down pa- 
tiently, the light in her eyes quite gone. Patiently too, 
without a word of interruption or comment, she listened 
while, as was customary, her father-in-law read aloud her 
husband’s letter. 

It was chiefly to say — what Keith had hinted by the 
last mail, that he should find it impossible to come home 
this next winter — when his two years of absence would 
expire. Equally impracticable — as he explained with 
greater length than perspicuity of argument — was it for 
him to send for his wife to Canada. Not that he was too 


249 


Two Marriages. 

poor to have her — indeed, he inclosed a very handsome 
sum of money to defray her maintenance and her own 
personal wants ; but his very prosperity seemed to make 
a barrier between them. 

“We enjoy some little civilization, even out here,” he 
wrote ; “ the few people I have as neighbors are tolera- 
bly well educated. And besides, in the lonely life of a 
Canadian farm, a man wants not only a wife, but a com- 
panion. I think, father, it would not be a twelvemonth 
wasted, either for her sake or mine, if for a year at 
least you would send Charlotte to some good boarding- 
school, or hire a governess to live in the village — you 
might not like a strange lady living at the Parsonage. 
I must say, I should like my wife to get a little educa- 
tion. It would be very valuable out here ; and if I ever 
should return and settle in England — But we will 
leave that an open question for time to decide.” 

Thus summarily, with a briefness that showed how in- 
different he was to it, Keith dismissed the subject, and 
went on to other things. 

The father’s heart was very sad — more than sad — 
angry. And yet Keith’s conduct was hardly unnatural; 
the more so as, with a feeling that it was best to leave 
Time’s workings to work themselves out without any in- 
terference on his part, Mr. Garland had carefully abstain- 
ed from writing much about Charlotte. He wished now 
he had done a little differently ; he determined by the 
next mail to speak his mind out plainly and clearly ; but, 
in the mean time, there Keith’s will was, given with a 
hard determination which seemed to have grown upon 
him of late, and his young wifamust obey. 


250 


Two Marriages. 


She never seemed to have any thought of disobeying. 
She sat passively, with her eyes cast down, and a dull, 
hopeless shadow creeping over the face, that ten minutes 
before had almost startled the old man with its exceed- 
ing brightness. She listened to the letter’s end, the part 
about herself being a very small portion of it ; the rest 
being filled up with statements of Keith’s affairs, which 
seemed very flourishing — and long essays on American 
politics, into which he seemed to have thrown himself 
with the ardor of one who has set aside, conscientiously 
perhaps, a young man’s temptations to pleasure and 
amusement, and plunged desperately into the pursuits 
of middle age. In short, he seemed, even at this early 
age, to have substituted ambition for love, and exchanged 
his heart for his brains. Throughout all the reading of 
his son’s letter, Mr. Garland saw, and felt when he did 
not see, the poor little face of his son’s wife, so quiet, so 
uncomplaining, that how much she thought he could not 
tell — he was half afraid to conjecture. But she spoke 
not a single word. 

“ My dear,” he said at last, “ should you like to have a 
governess?” 

“ Oh yes. Any thing you please — any thing he pleases.” 

“ Charlotte,” the parson spoke almost apologetically, 
“your husband does not quite know, but I shall explain 
to him next mail, how well you and I have got on to- 
gether, in studies and every thing ; how greatly you are 
improving — as a girl of your age has infinite capacities 
for doing. Above all, what a good, dear girl you inva- 
riably are to me.” 

“ Am I?” She looked up with those great dark eyes 
of hers, and in them he saw, as he had never seen it re* 


251 


Two Marriages. 

vealed before, tbe real womanly soul ; quick to feel, yet 
strong to endure ; long-suffering to almost the last limit 
of patience, yet having its pride too — its own righteous, 
feminine pride, which on occasion could assert itself — not 
aggressively, but with a certain dignified reticence, more 
pathetic than the loudest complaints. 

Though she was not his ideal of womanhood, and was 
wholly unlike the wife he had adored, the daughter he 
had imagined — quite a different type of character indeed, 
still the parson was forced to acknowledge that it was not 
an unbeautiful character. As it developed itself, he did 
more than merely like — he began, in degree, actually to 
respect Charlotte. 

He attempted neither to question her nor to draw out 
her feelings, so closely, so bravely restrained; but, simply 
giving her the letter to read over again at her leisure, 
asked her to light his candle for him, and he would go to 
bed ; he felt very weary to-night. 

“ So the boy will not be back for another year at least,” 
thought he, sighing; “and my years are growing so few.” 

Though he did not put the thought into words, Char- 
lotte heard the sigh, and saw the expression of the sad 
old face. 

“ It is as I expected, you see,” said she, in a low voice. 
“ He will not come home because of me. Oh sir” — and 
humbly, very humbly and tenderly she laid her hand 
upon Mr. Garland’s — “please forgive me. I am so sorry 
— for yow.” 

“ Never mind — never mind, my daughter.” 

And the desolate old man did what he had never in 
his life done to any woman — except one ; he took her in 
his arms and kissed her. 


252 


Two Marriages, 


CHAPTER X. 

Much is said and written upon the mournfulness of 
broken friendships — a subject almost too sad to write 
about; for such are like the hewing down of a tree — a 
sharp axe and a rash hand will destroy in an hour a 
whole life’s growth, and what no second lifetime can 
ever make grow again. And thinking thus of all shat- 
tered things, how easy it is to destroy and how difficult 
to retrieve, there is a certain sadness in contemplating 
even a broken acquaintanceship. 

It was not likely that a sensitive man like Mr. Garland 
could see with indifference the Crux family sitting be- 
neath him in the Hall pew Sunday after Sunday, listen- 
ing with civil attention to his sermons, but regarding him 
as no longer their friend — only their clergyman; and 
the service over, sweeping silently out of the narrow 
church, where every body knew every body and noticed 
every body, to their carriage, omitting entirely the cus- 
tomary greeting at the church-door or the church-yard 
gate. It was painful, too, to meet them in his walks, 
which he never took alone now, and for him and Char- 
lotte to have to pass without recognition, or tacitly to 
alter their path so as to escape meeting at all. At last 
these chance rencontres began to be looked forward to 
with such a sense of dread and discomfort that all the 


Two Marriages. 


253 


pleasure of the parson’s walks was taken away. He 
gradually seceded from the places he best liked — the 
shore, the cliff, and the downs, restricting his rambles 
daily, till after a few weeks he rarely stirred beyond the 
boundary of his own garden. 

His daughter-in-law, too, seemed to have no wish to 
go farther. Since the day on which these two moment- 
ous events had happened — the interview with Mrs. Crux, 
and Keith’s unexpected letter — a great change had come 
over poor Charlotte. Not in any tangible shape; she 
complained of nothing ; she went about her daily avoca- 
tions as usual, and betrayed neither by word nor act any 
thing that was passing in her mind ; but the whole ex- 
pression of her countenance altered. It grew sad, wist- 
ful, wan, and pale; there was a dreary hopelessness, at 
times even a sort of despair in it; the remorse of the 
roused conscience ; the agony of the blank, lost future ; 
the cruel awakening to a knowledge of happiness that 
might have been. At least so Mr. Garland read her 
looks — nor marveled ; for he knew that all this must 
come ; he could hardly have wished it not to come. 

Every man’s sin will find him out, and he must pay 
its penalty in a certain amount of inevitable suffering, 
from which the utmost pity can not, and should not, save 
him. Doubtless the Cruxes were very hard when they 
drew their own not spotless robes round them, and would 
not so much as look at poor Charlotte ; but their stained 
garments did not make Charlotte clean. And when, as 
they passed her by, the parson saw her face flush up, 
then settle into its customary sad patience, however much 
he grieved for her, still he dared not speak. He could 


254 


Two Marriages. 

saj with his Divine Master, “ Go, and sin no more.” He 
could even believe, from the bottom of his thankful 
heart, “ Thy sins are forgiven thee;” but he could not 
say that the sin was no sin, or that the ultimate result 
would be the same as if it had never happened. He 
could not look at that poor little face — so young still ; 
she was only nineteen even now — with all its lines sharp- 
ened by mental pain ; with its sweet smile darkened, and 
its sad eyes drooping; no longer able to face the world 
with the bright, clear gaze of conscious innocence — he 
could not see all this without acknowledging the just, 
righteous, inevitable law of God, which can never be 
broken with impunity. 

And what of the other sinner — still closer to the old 
man’s heart — who ought to have borne equally with 
Charlotte the burden that they had laid upon them- 
selves ? 

How Keith felt, or how much he suffered, neither his 
wife nor his father had any means of knowing. The one 
letter in which the parson had told about the Cruxes, and 
spoken his mind on many painful things; which had 
cost him much, for it is hard to write such sad, reproach- 
ful letters across the seas, in the long ignorance of how 
they may reach, and whether happier letters may ever 
follow them — this letter Keith never received. It went 
down to the bottom of the Atlantic with a wrecked mail- 
steamer. 

“I must write it over again,” said Mr. Garland, when 
he found out this. But he delayed and delayed,’ and 
meantime Keith went farther West on a trapping expe- 
dition, and for several weeks it was useless to write, as no 


Two Marriages, 


255 


letters would find him. And then came one — the rest- 
lessness, bitterness, and hopelessness of which grieved 
his father to the heart. 

In it he only referred to his wife so far as to take for 
granted that his commands had been obeyed ; that she 
was now at school, or busy with her education under a 
governess. But it was not so. At first Mr. Grarland had 
tried to fulfill his son’s wishes ; but no lady could be 
found willing to bury herself at Immeridge except at a 
salary higher than even Keith’s liberal remittances made 
possible. Besides — and Mr. Garland, when he showed 
her the letters, felt how bitter they must be to Charlotte 
— more than one governess made painfully pertinacious 
and rather suspicious inquiries as to the “curious circum- 
stance” of an adult pupil being a married lady, living 
apart from her husband. It was one of the sharp inevit- 
ables of the position, but not the less hard to bear. 

Then Mr. Garland suggested a boarding-school ; but 
here, for the first time in her life, Charlotte evinced a de- 
cided will of her own, and offered steady, though not vio- 
lent resistance. The reason she gave for this was brief 
and simple, but quite unanswerable. 

“ I am a married woman now ; I could not possibly 
become a school-girl, or go among school-girls.” 

It was only too true — true in a deeper sense than she 
put forward; and her father-in-law acknowledged this. 
The poor thing could never be a girl any more ; the door 
of girlhood was shut behind her ; and for the happy pride, 
the contented dignity which comes to any one, be she ever 
so young, when she finds herself a married woman, taken 
quite out of herself and made to live for another, perhaps 


256 


Two Marriages. 


for many others, in the sweet self-abnegation of matron- 
hood — alas ! this blessedness had not come, and, in one 
sense, never could come, to poor Charlotte. 

Not since the day when she first came to him had Mr. 
Garland pitied her so intensely, or mourned over her 
with such a hopeless regret as he did now. And yet he 
could not do any thing to make her happier or brighter, 
or take out of her heart the sting that he saw was there, 
piercing daily deeper and deeper the more as her nature 
developed. He knew it must be so. She, like himself, 
like every mortal soul, must be taught to accept and en- 
dure the inevitable. 

So the days passed on — the long, bright, weary summer 
days — the heat of which made the parson feel how feeble 
and old he was growing; too feeble to struggle against 
the hard present, or to fight his way out of it into a bet- 
ter future ; a future not for himself — he had long ceased 
to think of himself — but for these, his children. 

“ My working days are done, I think,” said he, sadly, 
one day when he and Charlotte had been busy togethej 
in the garden. For he now kept her about him as much 
as he could, from pure compassion, and to prevent her 
from falling into those long reveries in which he had 
sometimes found her, when the dull expression of her 
eyes, and the heavy, listless drop of her once active hands, 
made his heart bleed. “Come here, my dear; do help 
me. I never had so much trouble in training this creep- 
er. I can not lift up my right arm at all.” 

He spoke almost in a querulous tone, for he felt ill 
and unlike himself. Charlotte came quickly. The only 
brightness that ever dawned in her sad face was when 
she was doing something for Mr. Garland. 


257 


Two Marriages. 

“ Don’t work at all — I’ll do it,” she said. “ Pray, sir, 
give me the hammer and nails, and be idle a while. Let 
me fetch you your garden-chair.” 

This was a rough but comfortably‘Constructed piece of 
workmanship, the joint invention of Charlotte and the 
Immeridge carpenter, in the days when her simple daily 
occupations had been enough to fill her life, before the 
bitterness that came with the awakening soul had entered 
into it. Some of her old cheerfulness returned as she 
brought the chair and settled the old man tenderly in his 
favorite seat. 

“ There, now, T am sure you will be comfortable. What 
is wrong with your arm, sir ? May I rub it ? Jane lets 
me rub her rheumatic shoulder sometimes.” 

“ But this is not pain — it is numbness. I felt it when 
I woke this morning.” 

“ Perhaps you had been lying upon it, and your arm 
had gone to sleep, as children call it.” 

‘‘ Perhaps. And yet, if so, it ought to have been quite 
well by now.” 

“ It will be well presently,” was the soothing answer, 
as Charlotte, now fairly roused out of herself, knelt down 
beside Mr. Garland and began chafing the delicately- 
shaped right hand — he had once been conceited about 
the beauty of his hand, or his wife had been for him. It 
was still delicate, still un withered ; but the fingers seemed 
dropping together in a helpless way, and when Charlotte 
laid it on the chair-arm, it remained there passive and 
motionless. 

The old man shook his head. “It is of no use rub- 
bing, my dear. I can not feel your fingers.” 


258 


Two Marriages. 


Charlotte redoubled her energies. “ Oh, but you must 
feel them — you will feel them. My rubbing always does 
Jane good, she says. You are sure to be better by-and- 
by.” 

“ But suppose,” Mr. Garland replied, after a long pause 
and in a low tone, which had a certain concealed dread 
beneath its quietness, “suppose, Charlotte, that this should 
not be rheumatism. There is another complaint which 
old people have sometimes.” 

“What is that?” 

“ It is in our family too,” said Mr. Garland, musing. 
“ I know my grandfather died of paralysis.” 

Charlotte looked up. 

“ What is that? At least I half know, but not quite. 
Please tell me.” 

“ It is no pain — don’t look so frightened, my poor girl 
— no pain at all. And it does not kill people — not sud- 
denly. But sometimes it makes them helpless — totally 
helpless for years before they die. O my God, my God I” 
— and the old man lost all his courage and groaned aloud 
— “save me from that! Take me — take me at once! 
but oh, save me from being a trouble and a burden to 
any body.” 

“A trouble? a burden? Oh, Mr. Garland!” And 
Charlotte seized the poor numb right hand, pressed it to 
her bosom like a baby, kissed it, fondled it, sobbed over 
it, and expended on it such a passion of emotion, that the 
parson’s thoughts were turned from his own uneasy ap- 
prehensions into watching her, and wondering at the 
wealth of love that lay buried in that poor heart. 

“ Do not, my child, do not cry so bitterly. I should 


Two Marriages. 259 

not have said this. I had no idea you cared for me so 
much.” 

“ I have nobody else to care for — nobody that cares for 
my caring — in the wide world.” 

He could not contradict her — he knew she spoke the 
truth. But he said, what was also the truth, and every 
day when he saw the depths of sweetness, and patience, 
and womanly wisdom that sorrow was drawing out of 
her, and expressing visibly in her face, he himself be- 
lieved it more and more. “ No one but me to care for ? 
It may not be always so, Charlotte. God’s mercy is as 
infinite as our need. Wait and hope.” 

Whether it was that this sudden and unwonted emo- 
tion stirred up the old man’s vital forces into strength 
enough to shake off the impending ill, or whether this 
had been only a slight forewarning, he certainly grew 
better under his daughter’s care, and for some days was 
even brighter than ordinary. But it was only a tempo- 
rary wave of the gradually ebbing tide, which left the 
sands barer than before. 

Very soon there fell upon Mr. Garland’s green old age 
that most trying phase of life’s decline — often only a 
phase, and not necessarily implying life’s close, in which 
the body begins to fail faster than the still youthful and 
active mind, producing an irritable restlessness most pain- 
ful both to the sufferer and to the standers-by. The 
more he needed care, the less he seemed to like being 
taken care of. He felt it hard to resign o^ie by one his 
independent ways, and sink into, not an elderly, but a 
really old man ; becoming, as he said, like Saint Peter, 
who, when he was young, “girded himself,” but when 


260 


Two Marriages, 

old was to have “ another to gird him, and lead him in 
the way he would not.” If at this crisis he had been left 
only to Jane, and had not had about him a younger 
woman, gentle, sweet-tempered, and gifted naturally with 
that infinite patience which is, or ought to be, at once the 
duty and delight of all youth to show to all old age, 
things would have gone rather hard with Parson Garland. 

Perhaps he was aware of this, perhaps not; for the 
narrowing powers of fading life dim the perceptions of 
even the best of people ; but he was conscious of feel- 
ing great comfort in Charlotte. A change, sudden and 
bright, had come upon her ever since the day that he had 
told her of his fear of paralysis. She lost her listless, 
solitary ways, and began to devote herself daily and 
hourly to him, and him alone. Not that she troubled 
him with unnecessary watching or too patent anxiety, 
but she was always at hand when wanted; she never 
thwarted him ; she bore with all his little crotchets, even 
when, as he acknowledged to himself, they were very un- 
reasonable. And sometimes, in the long, sleepless night 
that succeeded many a restless day, the old man used to 
lie thinking, with a wondering gratefulness both to her 
and toward heaven, of the sweet temper that was never 
ruffled, the young face that tried so hard to be always 
pleasant and sunshiny when in his sight, the attentive 
hands that were ever ready to do enough, and never too 
much, for the innumerable wants of his selfish, or he 
thought it selfish, old age. 

“ God is very good to me, more than I deserve,” he 
ofttimes said in his heart ; “ and if I wait, surely in His 
own time He will be good to these my children.” 


261 


Two Marriages. 

But, although the tie between him and his daughter- 
in-law grew closer every day, Mr. Garland, with the 
shrinking delicacy which was a part of his nature, never 
attempted to lift the veil which Charlotte still persistent- 
ly drew over the relations between herself and her hus- 
band, and her own feelings toward him. The old man 
would have been ashamed to pry into what she evidently 
desired to conceal. All his life he had borne his own 
burdens, troubling no one ; he could understand and re- 
spect another’s doing the same. Charlotte’s total reti- 
cence and silent endurance touched him deeper than the 
most pathetic complaints or most unreserved confidence. 

So they lived together, these strangely-assorted com- 
panions, who yet in their deepest hearts were so curious- 
ly assimilated as to become better company to each other 
every day. Contentedly they spent the life of almost to- 
tal solitude which circumstances had forced upon them, 
for the Crux influence had leavened the neighborhood, 
which indeed, without much malice aforethought on their 
part, it was sure to do ; and those few county families 
who were in the habit of driving over to Immeridge at 
intervals, just to acknowledge the existence of, and pay a 
passing respect to, the Keverend William Garland, grad- 
ually ceased their visits to the Parsonage. He had not 
wanted them when they came, but he noticed their ab- 
sence, and was sure that Charlotte noticed it too, for she 
often looked at him in a strange, wistful way, as if she 
wished to say something to him, and could not. Heaven 
had punished her, as Heaven does sometimes, not direct- 
ly, but vicariously. In a heart so full of love as hers 
(ofteu did the parson recall Keith’s almost complaining 


262 


Two Marriages. 


words, “ She is so very fond of me”), that others should 
suffer through her fault was of all retributions the sharp- 
est, and likely to work out the most lasting result on her 
character. 

It did so presently in a manner unforeseen. Seeing 
Mr. Garland had no one left him but herself, Charlotte 
shook off her depression, and learned to be cheerful for 
his sake. She tried to make herself every thing that 
pleased him, and his being the sole influence that ever 
approached her, it was almost omnipotent of its kind. 
When two people of opposite dispositions are thus thrown 
constantly together, they either end by absolute dislike 
and disunion, or they grow into the most touching like- 
ness in unlikeness, which often harmonizes better than 
absolute similarity. 

Ere many months, the parson’s daughter-in-law had be- 
come to his failing age almost more than a daughter of 
his own ; for, as he said sometimes, his own daughter 
would certainly have gone away and left him, to marry 
some strange youth, while his son’s wife was safely bound 
to him forever. And he to her was not only as dear as 
a natural born father, but was also — what, alas! all fa- 
thers in the flesh are not — her ideal of every thing that a 
man should be. She became to him a perfect slave, as 
women like to be, though in that happiest bondage where 
affection is the only forger of the chains. But the title 
he himself gave her was his “ right hand 1” 

Ere long this became only too true a name. 

One day, as he was writing his sermon, Charlotte sit- 
ting sewing at the study window, for he was so constant- 
ly needing her help in little things that he liked to have 


263 


Two Marriages. 

her within call, the pen dropped from Mr. Garland’s fin- 
gers. The same numbness which he had once complain- 
ed of came on again ; his right hand fell helplessly by 
his side, and he never used it more. 

This was not discovered immediately ; as before, the 
affection was at first considered temporary, and all reme- 
dies were' tried. Simple household remedies only; for 
Mr. Garland did not feel ill ; he suffered no pain ; and it 
was only on Charlotte’s earnest entreaty that he allowed 
medical help to be sent for. 

But when this was done, and the doctor looked grave, 
and said, on being questioned, that it was really “a stroke” 
— as the country people call it — and that the natural use 
would in all human probability never return to that poor, 
nerveless right hand, the blow fell lighter than might 
have been expected. Most likely because the parson 
himself bore it so well. Now that his secret dread for 
months — and he owned now how heavy it had been — 
had come upon him, the reality seemed less dreadful than 
the fear. He met his misfortune with a wonderful calm- 
ness and fortitude. His irritability ceased; he faced 
courageously the local bodily infirmity, thanking God 
that it was only local, and did not affect either his facul- 
ties or his speech. He made his arrangements for future 
helplessness with a touching patience, reminding Char- 
lotte, who hovered about him in pale silence, and Jane, 
who broke into loud outbursts of lamentation at every 
word, how the doctor had said that he might yet live to 
be ninety, and die of some other disease after all. 

“And if not,” added he, “if the burden that I myself 
feel heaviest is to be the especial burden that God will 


264 


Two Marriages. 


have me bear — (you will often find it so in life, Char- 
lotte) — still, I will take it up and bear it. I have re- 
ceived good from His hands all my days, and He will 
help me in what seems like evil.” 

“ You speak like a saint almost,” said Charlotte, softly. 

“ She was a saint who taught me.” 

“Some day — if you should ever think I deserve to 
hear — will you tell me about her ?” 

It was said so humbly, with such a world of reverence 
and tenderness in the imploring eyes, that the parson was 
startled. Never before had he even mentioned to his 
daughter-in-law this one woman whom he had so adored ; 
a woman and wife like herself, yet who always seemed a 
being of another creation from poor Charlotte. But now, 
in the strange changes that time had made, through the 
mysterious influence by which his memory of the wife he 
had lost had guided his conduct toward the daughter he 
had so unexpectedly and regretfully found, Mr. Garland 
recognized, amid all differences, the common womanhood 
of these two — Mary and Charlotte Garland. Ay, though 
one had lived and died white as snow, and the other was 
smirched with sin ; though one was all that was charm- 
ing in ladyhood, and the other — Well, things had gone 
hard with poor Charlotte ! Still, still, there was in both 
of them the root and centre of all lovableness in woman 
— the strong self-abnegation, the divine humility of Love. 

“ Charlotte,” said the parson — and he tried to see her 
with the eyes with which his Mary would have regarded 
this girl, her son’s wife — eyes searching as a mother’s 
should be, yet withal unfailingly tender, pitiful, generous, 
and just : “ Charlotte, would you really like to hea?* p,bopt 


265 


Two Marriages. 

your husband’s mother — the noblest woman that ever 
breathed ?” 

“ Should I ?” Charlotte’s face answered the question. 

So, forgetting every thing else, forgetting even that 
this was the first sad night when he was made fully con- 
scious of his infirmity, and of the fact that it would last 
during the remainder of his life, Mr. Garland sat down by 
his study fire, and began talking with his daughter-in-law 
quietly and cheerfully, and with an open confidence that 
he had never shown her before. And she listened with 
all her heart in her eyes, and yet with a touch of sadness, 
like one who was hearing of a far-oflf paradise, of which, 
for her, the door was forever closed — about the days of 
his youth, studious and solitary ; his long but never wea- 
ry courtship-years ; of his one happy twelve-month of 
married life, and his dear dead wife, Mary Garland. 


266 


Two Marriages, 


CHAPTER XL 

By the next Sunday all Immeridge had learned the 
heavy affliction — as many would have said, till his placid 
face forbade them to call it so — which had befallen the 
parson. There was scarcely one of his flock present who 
did not follow him with compassionate eyes as he walked 
slowly up the pulpit stairs, his right arm hidden under 
the sleeve of his gown, and began to turn over the leaves 
of the prayer-book with his left hand. And when, giving 
out the hymn, in his nervousness and slight awkwardness 
he dropped the book, and it narrowly escaped the clerk’s 
head, and was solemnly picked up and handed back to 
him by the beadle, not even a mischievous child smiled ; 
the congregation were all far more inclined to weep. 

After service was over, many hung about the church- 
yard, as if they wished to see or speak to the parson. 
But Mr. Garland remained in the vestry for a considera- 
ble time, no one being admitted but his daughter-in-law. 
Then, taking her arm and walking feebly, he was seen to 
cross the church-yard the accustomed way, and re-enter 
his garden gate. 

If any of his neighbors had ever said a word against 
him, they were all silent now — silent and sorry. They 
gathered in knots round the church door and the lane 
leading to it, every body talking with sympathy and re- 
spect of “ poor Mr. Garland.” 


Two Marriages. 


267 


Next morning, to the extreme amazement of the little 
household, once more the tall footman from the Hall ap- 
peared at the Parsonage with a message : kind inquiries 
after Mr. Garland’s health, and begging his acceptance 
of a basket of hot-house grapes and a brace of par- 
tridges. 

“ What shall we do, Charlotte ?” said the parson, who 
looked pleased : it was not in human nature that he 
should not be somewhat pleased. “ It is unneighborly 
and unchristian to refuse their peace-offering, and yet I 
can not bear to take it. I never wish to have any thing 
more to do with the people at the Hall.” 

“No,” replied Charlotte, with the sad gravity which 
always came over her when the Cruxes were named — of 
her own accord she never named them at all. 

“What would you like done, my dear? You shall 
decide.” 

She thought a minute, and then said, “ Send a friendly 
message back, but do not accept their present. Say the 
grapes would be welcome to old Molly Carr, or to some 
other sick person down the village, whom Mrs. Crux 
used so often to send things to.” 

“Yes, that will do. You have a wise little head, 
child,” said the parson, affectionately. 

He went himself and delivered the message to the 
servant, making it as kindly and courteous as possible ; 
then he and his daughter-in-law sat together for a good 
while in silence, he reading and she working, as was their 
habit after breakfast. 

“And now, my dear, let us put aside all unpleasant 
things, and make ourselves busy — usefully busy, this 


268 


Two Marriages. 


sunshiny morning. I like the sunshine. Oh, thank God 
that he has left me the sight of my eyes !” said the par- 
son, sighing. “ But come, we’ll have no sadness and no 
complaining ; for I might be much worse off. Charlotte, 
you will have to be really my right hand now. How 
does your writing progress ? it is long since you showed 
me your copy-book. What if I were to begin and dic- 
tate to you my next Sunday’s sermon ?” 

“Only try me, and you will see how I will do it,” an- 
swered Charlotte, brightly. 

“Very well. But first there are all my letters to 
write. Look how many lie in the box marked ‘ unan- 
swered.’ ” 

There was an accumulation of four or five, which he 
turned over uneasily. “ Ah ! I neglected them, and now 
it is too late.” 

“Could not I—” 

“ No, you couldn’t, child,” with some slight irritability. 
“They are business letters; a woman’s writing would 
look odd, especially — Oh, if I had but my son beside 
me ! If Keith would only come home.” He once more 
sighed bitterly, then saw Charlotte’s face, and stopped. 

“ My dear, you must not mind me if I say sharp or 
foolish things sometimes. I do not mean it. You will 
bear with an old man, I know.” 

“Oh, Mr. Garland !” 

She came to his side and began caressing, in her own 
tender way, the powerless hand, which, by an ingenious 
arrangement of his coat-sleeve, she had tied up so that its 
helplessness might inconvenience him as little as possi- 
})le. A slight caress, not much ; he was not used to af 


Two Marriages, 269 

fectionate demonstrations ; but these touched him. He 
put his other hand on her head. 

“You are very good to me, Charlotte. I think you 
must be fond of me — a little.” 

She laughed — the loving little laugh which supplies 
all words — and then placed herself beside him, with pen 
and paper all arranged. 

“ I am quite ready now, sir. But” — with a slight hes- 
itation — “ there is one letter which, perhaps, to make 
quite sure, had best be written first. Do you remember 
to-morrow is the Canadian mail ?” 

“ Ah ! true, true ! Poor Keith ! He will never again 
see his old father’s handwriting.” 

It was a small thing, but one of those small things 
which, causing us fully to realize any loss, cut very deep 
sometimes. The parson leaned back in his chair, and the 
rare tears of old age stole through his shut eyelids. 

“ Never mind — never mind !” said he at last, drawing 
his fingers across his eyes. It must be so some time 
or other. We go on taking care of our children, and 
fancying no one can do it but ourselves, till Cod removes 
them from us, or us from them, as if just to show us that 
He is sufficient to take care of them. And in this matter 
— why, Keith will hardly miss my letters. You can so 
easily put down all I want to say, Charlotte, my dear. 
So begin at once. 

“ What shall I write ?” 

“Let us see. ‘My dear Keith.’ But that will puzzle 
him. Put at the top ‘Dictated.’ No, stop! My dear, 
why should not you yourself write to your husband ?” 

“ He has never asked me.” 


270 


Two Marriages. 

That was true, though the omission had grown so fa- 
miliar that the parson had of late not even remarked it 
Since the first few illiterate scrawls, which, with almost 
an exaggerated dread of their effect on a young man ed- 
ucated and scholarly, Mr. Garland had forwarded, Keith 
had never asked his wife to write to him, nor — carefully 
regular as were his messages to her — had he taken the 
slightest notice of her continued silence. In truth, in 
this and in all other things, except mere surface matters, 
he had sheathed himself up in such an armor of reserve, 
that of the real Keith Garland, the man who now was, 
they knew absolutely nothing; though they felt — most 
certainly his father did — that he was a person very dif- 
ferent from the boy who went out to Canada two years 
and a half ago. 

“Supposing he has not asked you to write; still, why 
should you not do it ?” 

“ I can not tell ; only I think it would be better not.” 
And Charlotte’s firm-set mouth showed that she did not 
wish to say any more. Nor did her father-in-law attempt 
to urge her. It was with him both principle and prac- 
tice that no third hand — not even a parent’s — can safely 
touch, under almost any circumstances, the bond between 
husband and wife. 

“ Well,” said he, sighing, “ do as you think best, Char- 
lotte. And now let me write my letter — that is, dictate 
it. Put at the top that it is dictated, and then he will un- 
derstand.” 

So they sat together a long two hours; for Mr. Gar- 
land was restless and awkward, unaccustomed to any pen 
but his own, and nervously anxious over the wording of 


271 


Two Marriages. 

the letter. His patient secretary tore up more than one 
sheet to please him, and began again ; he seemed so fear- 
ful of saying either too much or too little. 

“You see, my dear, I wish to be careful. If we alarm 
Keith too much about me, he may come home at once, 
and I would not have him do that against his will, or 
to the injury of his future prospects. Yet if we left 
him quite in ignorance, and any thing did happen to 
me — ” 

Charlotte looked up alarmed. “But the doctor said — ” 

“He said what was quite true, that I may live ten 
years and never have another attack. But if one did 
come — there was no need to tell me this, for I knew it — 
things might prove very serious.” 

“What would happen ? How would the stroke affect 
you? Do not be afraid to tell me all you know.” 

Charlotte spoke with composure, fixing her eyes stead- 
ily on the old man’s face as she did so, though she had 
turned very pale. 

“I will tell you, my dear, for you are not a coward, 
and it is right you should know ; it is right I should 
have somebody about me who does know. If I were to 
have another ‘ stroke,’ as people call it, I might lose my 
speech, the use of my limbs, my mind even. Oh Char' 
lotte,” as with a touching appeal he took hold of her 
hand, “it is great weakness in me — great want of faith 
and trust; but sometimes I feel frightened at the future, 
and I wish my dear boy would come home.” 

“ What hinders his coming home ? Is it — is it 
me ?” 

The old man was sorely perplexed. It was one of 


272 


Two Marriages. 

those questions so hard plainly to answer, so impossible 
wholly to deny. He met it as alone this good man could 
meet any thing — by the plain truth. 

“Yes, my child,” he said, keeping her hand, and speak- 
ing tenderly, for he felt so exceedingly sorry for her, “it 
may be, in some degree, on account of you. This is the 
penalty that people must pay who make hasty or ill-as- 
sorted marriages, or, indeed, do any thing that is wrong ; 
they must go through a certain term of probation, and 
bear a certain amount of suffering. You have suffered, 
my poor Charlotte ?” 

“ Oh, I have — I have !” 

“ And, I doubt not, so has Keith. He may dread com- 
ing home, and finding you only what he left you, which 
was very different from himself, and equally different 
from what you now are. Still, not knowing this, he may 
shrink — most men do — after the first impulse of passion 
is over, from spending his whole life with a woman who 
was not his deliberate choice.” 

“ Yes, I understand.” 

“ Ah ! my dear, I did not mean to hurt you. It was 
as hard for you as it was for him. We may learn from 
our mistakes, and make the best of them, and they may 
come right in time ; but we must suffer for them. Mar- 
riage is an awful thing, and its very irrevocableness — the 
‘ till death us do part,’ which to some is the dearest com- 
fort, to others becomes the most galling bondage.” 

The parson had gone on speaking, more in his moral- 
izing, absent way than with any special reference to her, 
but his words struck home. 

Charlotte drew her hands softly away from him, and 


Two Marriages. 273 

folded them together with a determination desperate in 
its very gentleness. 

“ Mr. Garland, will you tell me one thing? Can mar- 
ried people be parted — legally — except by death ?” 

“It ought not to be, my dear, but I believe it is done 
sometimes. I have heard of a Court in London where 
people can get separated from one another so as even to 
be free to marry again. But we old-fashioned people do 
not like such divorces. We will not speak about them, 
Charlotte. We were speaking about you and your hus- 
band. He may dislike the thought of coming home now ; 
but if he once came, I hope, I feel sure, things would be 
quite different. Still, let us neither compel him nor urge 
him — it is best not. Forgive me if, just for my own 
selfish sake, I can’t help wishing my boy would come 
home.” 

“ He will come home. Do not be uneasy ; he is sure 
to come home.” 

And then, recurring to the letter, Charlotte kept the 
old man’s wandering attention fixed upon it till it was 
finished. Afterward she said, to her father-in-law’s great 
but carefully concealed surprise, 

“And now, if you could spare me for an hour, I should 
like to go and write myself to my husband.” 

“ That is well — that is excellent,” cried Mr. Garland, 
much delighted. “ Do write to him — as long a letter as 
ever you can. He will be very glad of it.” 

“Will he?” 

“ Only, Charlotte, please, tell him no more about me 
than we have said already. You will promise that? 
You comprehend my reasons?” 


274 


Two Marriages. 

“Yes,” said Charlotte, as she rose, slowly and dreami- 
ly, and gathered up the ink and paper. 

“But why go away ? Why not write here ? I would 
not interrupt you ; and my good little scholar writes so 
well now that I have not the slightest intention of look- 
ing over or correcting her letters — never again, I assure 
you.” 

“Oh no!” and Charlotte smiled, not one of her old 
childish smiles, but the exceedingly sad one which had 
come in their stead. “ But, indeed, I had rather be alone. 
I am very stupid, you know, sir. You forget, it is not 
easy for me to write a letter, and it ought to be a pretty 
letter — ought it not? when it is written to my husband?” 

“Certainly — certainly. Off with you, and do your 
very best. Ah 1 my dear, you’ll be such a clever girl by 
the time your husband comes home 1” 

Charlotte smiled again, but this time the smile was not 
merely sad — it was broken-hearted. 

After she was gone, Mr. Garland sat in anxious medi- 
tation — at least, as anxious as his failing age, upon which 
all cares now began to fall slightly deadened, allowed 
him to feel. Much he regretted that with the weak put- 
ting off of a painful thing, which was the peculiarity of 
his character, he had so long delayed rewriting that miss- 
ing epistle about the Cruxes and Charlotte. How could 
it be done now ? Never, at first he feared ; for it was 
impossible Keith’s wife could write it, and no other hand 
could he use to indite so private a letter. 

“ If I could but do it myself. I have heard of people 
who learned to write with their left hand,” thought the 
parson; and, taking up a pen, he began to try — a pro- 


Two Marriages, 


275 


ceeding which needs trying in order to discover how 
very difficult it is. Discomfited entirely by pen and ink, 
he attempted a lead-pencil, and with much effort, and 
many an ache of the feeble old hand and wrist, succeed- 
ed, after an hour’s hard practice, in legibly signing his 
name. Then, quite worn out, he stretched himself in his 
arm-chair and wished for Charlotte. 

“ What a long time she has been away — far more than 
an hour !” And then he smiled, with an amused won- 
der, to think how much he missed her. 

“ If I find her so necessary, surely her husband will, 
when he has learned all her usefulness, all her goodness. 
Oh yes, it will be all right by-and-by, when Keith comes 
home.” 

And so it was with a cheerful countenance that he met 
his daughter, showed her how he had been amusing him- 
self in her absence, and exacted her approbation of his 
left-handed performances. 

“ I am so clever I shall be able to write with my own 
hand next mail, I think. But we will not tell Keith now. 
We will just give him a surprise.” 

And the idea of this, and the relief to his mind that it 
brought, pleased Mr. Garland so much, that he went on 
talking quite gayly all the time Charlotte was inclos- 
ing, addressing, and sealing her letter, which she made 
no attempt to offer for his perusal. Nor did he de- 
sire it 

He never noticed, also, that all the time she scarcely 
spoke ; and that, after she had given Jane the letter to 
post — Canadian letters were not trusted to any body but 
themselves or Jane — she came and knelt beside him, os- 


276 


Two Marriages. 


tensibly to warm her hands at the fire. She was shaking 
like a person in an ague. 

“ How very cold you are ! How could you stay up 
so long in that chilly room, you foolish girl I you never 
think of yourself at all.” 

“ Oh no. It isn’t worth while.” 

Mr. Garland regarded her uneasily as she crouched on 
the rug, her face to the fire-light, which seemed to cheer 
her no more than the moon upon a snow-field. But he 
thought of his letter, which he would certainly be able 
to write by next mail — ay, he would, if he accomplished 
it at the rate of a line a day, and became comforted con- 
cerning Charlotte. 

After the mail had gone, the parson’s mind was so re- 
lieved that his bodily health began to recruit itself a lit- 
tle. His helpless hand was at least no worse, and he be- 
gan to get accustomed to the loss of it, and to do without 
it, awkwardly and drearily at first, but soon very uncom- 
plainingly. The trouble it gave him to do the most or- 
dinary things, and the time they took in doing, occupied 
the hours, and prevented his feeling so bitterly the lack 
of his daily writing. He dictated to Charlotte whatever 
was absolutely necessary, and he set himself to work, 
with the diligence of a shool-boy, to learn to write with 
his left hand. In short. Providence was tempering the 
wind to him, poor old man! in many ways, so as to 
make him slip easily and painlessly into that world 
where he would awake and be young again ; or be — 
whatsoever God would have him to be, in the unknown 
country, where he had but two desires, to find Him and 
his wife Mary. 


277 


Two Marriages. 

Still, he had much enjoyment of his present existence. 
It happened to be an especially lovely spring, and he and 
his daughter-in-law spent hours daily in wandering about 
the cliffs and downs, looking at the sunshiny sea which 
was settling itself down in peace after its winter storms, 
or else penetrating inland, and hunting for wild-flowers 
in those woody nooks which make this part of the coun- 
try, so near the coast, a perfect treasure-house for all who 
love nature. And he tried, not vainly, to put into Char- 
lotte that simple but intense delight which he himself 
took in all natural things, thereby giving her an educa- 
tion, both of mind and heart, which is worth much book- 
learning, especially to a woman. 

Their walks were made pleasanter by the lifting off of 
the Crux incubus. With the extraordinary infatuation 
of the “ fashionable” world, this gay metropolitan family 
had discovered that living any where out of London in 
spring-time was absolutely unendurable. So they mi- 
grated back to their old haunts, leaving the Hall, for the 
time being, deserted, and the roads about Immeridge safe 
and free. They had never again called at the Parsonage, 
but they had sent at least twice a week to inquire for Mr. 
Garland ; and once, in passing him and Charlotte, they 
driving in their handsomest barouche down a hilly road 
where to stop and speak was conveniently impossible, 
Mrs. Crux had bowed, whether to one or both remained 
questionable, but it was a most undoubted and conde- 
scending bow. 

“ Our friends certainly mean to take us up again, by 
slow degrees,” said the parson, a little amused. He had 
returned the salutation distantly, but courteously, as a 


278 


Two Marriages. 


parson should, whose duty, more even than most men, is 
to live in charity with all ; but he did not wish to have 
his motives or intentions mistaken. “ I have no desire,” 
he continued, “ to have any intimacy with the Cruxes. 
You will find, Charlotte, throughout life, which is not long 
enough for any needless pain, that ‘ marry in haste and 
repent at leisure’ is as true of friendship as it is of love. 
We should be quite sure our friends suit us before we 
join hands, otherwise they either cumber us or drop from 
us, like ill-fitting clothes, or they cling to us and destroy 
us, like the poisoned shirt of Dejanira — did you ever hear 
of Dejanira?” 

And then he told her the story — as he did many an- 
other story, out of his endless learning — partly to amuse 
himself, and partly from the feeling that every sort of 
knowledge might one day be valuable to her. 

“But to return to the Cruxes,” continued he; “I do 
not regret their civilities, though more than civility is 
neither possible nor desirable. Still, if they are polite, 
we will be polite too, if only on Keith’s account. It is 
bad for a man not to be on good terms with his neigh- 
bors.” 

And then the parson began to talk — as he never could 
help talking — more and more every day, of the chances 
pro and con of Keith’s return, and what would happen 
when he did return ; whether he would go out again to 
Canada, or whether, since he had been so successful, and 
shown such remarkable capabilities for success in farm- 
ing, he would not turn his attention to it in England, and 
perhaps settle near Immeridge, to the infinite comfort of 
his father’s declining days. 


Two Marriages. 279 

“And, if he has a real pleasant home — if his wife makes 
it as pleasant as she has made mine — why then — ” 

He turned and saw Charlotte’s face — it was deathly 
white. 

“Please don’t!” she gasped. “Oh, please don’t, Mr. 
Garland.” 

He said no more, for he saw she could not bear it ; but 
he thought with deep thankfulness how devotedly Keith’s 
poor little wife must love him still. 

And the love might be not unneeded. For several 
times, when in his weary want of something to do, he had 
amused himself by re-reading, in regular succession, his 
son’s letters, Mr. Garland was struck by an undefined and 
yet clearly perceptible change in them. There seemed a 
harshness, a hardness growing over Keith, mingled with 
a reckless indifference, a complete avoidance of all refer- 
ence to the future, which, the more he pondered it over, 
the more alarmed his father. But there was nothing to be 
done — nothing but to write that letter, which he penned 
painfully, a few lines every day, telling his son the whole 
history of himself and Charlotte ; how he had grown 
week by week, and month by month, to pity her, to like 
her, to esteem her, to love her. 

Yes, he did really love her. He had long suspected 
this, now he felt sure of it. Into the lonely, self-con- 
tained, but infinitely tender heart, where no woman, save 
one, had ever dwelt, crept this new relationship, full of 
all the delicacy and chivalry which such a man was sure 
to have toward any woman, by whatever tie connected 
with him, uniting at once the grave protection of father- 
hood with the clinging dependence that his now feeble 


280 


Two Marriages, 


age made natural to him. Ay, in this strange and mys- 
teriously bitter way, the last way he had ever contem- 
plated or expected, the parson had found his “ daughter” 
— found her simply by doing a father’s duty, in the inev- 
itable circumstances under which he had been called upon 
to act. 

He felt great peace as he sat in his garden-chair with 
Charlotte busy near him, or sitting sewing at his side. 
She was one of those women who, without any obnox- 
iously demonstrative industry, are never seen idle. Day 
by day he admired her more and more, and was con- 
vinced that Keith would do the same, until the true ten- 
der love, ay, and reverence, which every husband should 
bear to his wife, would surely come. He felt so certain 
that all would be right soon, very soon — perhaps even 
during his lifetime. He spent hours in planning out and 
dreaming over the future; and so absorbed was he in 
these fancies and speculations, that he forgot to take much 
present notice of Charlotte. 

When Jane suggested, as she did once, that Mrs. Keith 
Garland was looking excessively thin and worn, he still 
scarcely heeded it, or set it down to the hot weather, or to 
a natural suspense concerning her husband’s return ; but, 
as she never opened the subject of her own accord, he did 
not like to question her ; and she, being always so very 
unobtrusive and uncommunicative regarding herself and 
her feelings, doing all her duties, and especially those 
which concerned Mr. Garland, with the most affectionate 
and sedulous care, he did not discover, as perhaps indeed 
only a woman would, that this poor woman, so young 
still, went about like a person stunned — who does every 


Two Marriages. 281 

thing in a sort of dream, waiting with terror for the mo- 
ment of awakening. 

Only once or twice, when unable to resist talking of his 
hopes, and longing for some confirmation of them from 
another’s heart than his own, Mr. Garland asked her seri- 
ously what she thought of the probabilities of Keith’s re- 
turn, Charlotte answered decidedly, 

“ Oh yes, he will come — be quite sure your son will 
come home.” 

And, in the delight of this expectation, the old man 
forgot to notice that she said, as she always did now, 
“your son,” never “my husband.” 


282 


Two Marriages, 


CHAPTER XII. 

The following mail brought Keith’s never-failing let- 
ter, written, of course, in ignorance of the sad tidings now 
speeding to him across the seas. Nor would they prob- 
ably reach him in time to be answered by the return 
mail, for he spoke of an intended business journey down 
South, which would occupy the few days between the re- 
ceiving and answering of letters ; so he prepared his fa- 
ther for having none at all this time. 

“ The first time he will ever have missed writing,” said 
the parson, trying to shake ofi* a certain dreary feeling 
which Keith’s letter left behind — the letter, written with 
that unconsciousness of all that was happening at home, 
and read, unknowing what might have happened to the 
writer since, two things which throw such an indefinite 
but unsurmountable sadness over even the cheeriest and 
pleasantest “ foreign correspondence.” 

This was not an especially cheerful letter as to its tone, 
though its contents were good news. Keith explained to 
his father, who tried to explain to Charlotte — and the old 
man and the girl were about equally obtuse in compre- 
hending it — some business transaction by which he hoped 
to realize a considerable sum. “ Perhaps I may turn out 
a rich man yet,” wrote he, with a slight tone of triumph. 
“I have certainly done very well so far; in a worldly 
point of view, that forced march to Canada was the best 


283 


Two Marriages. 

thing that ever happened to me. Besides, I like the clh 
mate ; I have no dislike to the country ; in truth, nothing 
should induce me to leave it. I would not care ever to 
see Old England again, if coming over (he did not say 
“coming home”) were not my only means of getting a 
sight of my dear old father.” 

Always his father, never his wife. Charlotte listened 
— a little paler, a little stiller than before, if that were 
possible — but she neither questioned nor complained of 
any thing. Once only, as she was hanging over her fa- 
ther-in-law’s chair, arranging his cushions for his after- 
noon nap, he talking the while of Keith — for, indeed, the 
subject never failed him — she said gently, when he asked 
what she thought about the matter, 

“ Oh yes, your son will come home. Make yourself 
quite easy ; he is sure to come home — not immediately, 
perhaps, but by-and-by.” 

The old man looked up with a touching eagerness. 
“ Do you really think so, Charlotte? Before winter?” 

“Yes, before winter,” said Charlotte, as she turned 
away. 

The following mail brought no letter, for which, how- 
ever, they were prepared. Nevertheless, the blank seem- 
ed to make the parson rather restless for some hours, till 
he consoled himself by reflecting that the journey down 
South, while it hindered Keith’s receiving his letters, 
saved him temporarily from the pain of the news they 
brought^ and lessened by a few days his suspense till the 
next mail came in. And that next mail would bring 
him the all-important letter, so long delayed, but which 
the father had duly finished, left-handed, accomplishing 


284 


Two Marriages. 


it line by line, with a tender persistency, in spite of all 
sorts of remonstrances from Charlotte, who would not see 
why he should be so earnest about it. 

“ Suppose it should never reach him,” said she, when, 
in compliance with Mr. Garland’s desire, she inclosed and 
forwarded it, declining to write herself this time. “ Sup- 
pose,” and she watched her father-in-law stealthily but 
eagerly, “suppose he should even now be on his way 
home ?” 

“ Oh no, that is quite impossible,” replied the parson, 
sighing. How impossible he did not like to say ; for, 
judging his son by himself, by most men, he felt that 
nothing except the strongest sense of duty could conquer 
the repugnance a man would feel to coming home under 
Keith’s circumstances — to a wife whom he neither re- 
spected nor loved, but only pitied. But that momentous 
letter would set every thing right. He had written it 
with the utmost tact and tenderness of which he was ca- 
pable, placing every thing before his son in the plainest 
light, and yet doing it delicately, as should be done by 
the father of a grown-up son, who has no longer any 
right to interfere in that son’s affairs farther than to sug- 
gest and advise. Yes, this letter would surely make all 
right. So he had sent it off in spite of Charlotte, and 
with an amused resistance to her arguments, and his 
heart followed it with prayers. 

Thus, after the first few hours, he ceased to be disap- 
pointed at the absence of Keith’s letter, and after waiting 
another half day, and hearing accidentally that other 
American letters had come all safe — the housekeper at 
Cruxham Hall had also a son in Canada — the parson and 


Two Marriages. 285 

Lis daughter settled their minds calmly to wait on until 
the next mail. 

It was a bright summer morning, and Mr. Garland sat 
enjoying it in his garden — alone, too, a thing which rare- 
ly happened. But, fancying he saw a certain restlessness 
and trouble in Charlotte’s look, he had made occupation 
for her by sending her away on a long expedition, to vis- 
it a sick person at the other end of the parish. 

For, since his increasing feebleness, this duty also — so 
natural under most circumstances to a parson’s daughter 
— visiting the sick, had gradually slipped into Charlotte’s 
hands. He hardly knew how it had come about, wheth- 
er it was his suggestion or her own that she should un- 
dertake it, but she had undertaken it, and she fulfilled it 
well Nor had there come any of the difiiculties which 
he had once anticipated ; for the whole parish was so 
anxious about him, and so touched with tenderness con- 
cerning him, that they would have received gladly and 
gratefully any body who came from the parson. The 
ice once broken by mutual sympathy, Charlotte — the new 
Charlotte, who was so strangely different from Lotty 
Dean — slowly made her way into the folks’ hearts, espe- 
cially by the exceeding kindness which she showed to- 
ward old people and children. Soon, though she said 
nothing about it herself, others said — and it reached the 
parson’s ears with a strange thrill, half pleasure, half pain 
— that Immeridge parish had never been so well looked 
after since the days of the first Mrs. Garland. 

Mr. Garland watched his son’s wife as she walked 
across the garden with her basket in hand, stepping light- 
ly, in her brown Holland morning-dress and jacket, and 


286 


Two Marriages. 

simple straw hat, under which her abundant hair no 
longer curled; the parson, with his classic taste, had 
made her twist it smoothly up, in Grreek grace and mat- 
ronly decorousness, round the well-shaped head. She 
was a pretty sight ; to one who loved physical beauty, a 
perpetual daily pleasure; but he hardly knew whether 
it made him most sad or most glad to see — and he had 
seen it especially this morning — in her face that without 
which all faces, and all characters, are imperfect, the 
beauty of suffering. 

The old man’s gaze followed her with great tenderness, 
and when she was out of sight he involuntarily took out 
his watch, to reckon how many hours she was likely to 
be away from him. If any one had told him this two 
years and a half ago — if he could have believed that this 
brief time would have made so great a change, not only 
in his feelings toward her, but in herself! And yet, at 
her impressionable time of life, it was not impossible ; 
least of all, considering the many strong influences at 
work within her and around her, not the least of which, 
though he was the last person to suspect it, was Mr. Gar- 
land’s own. 

Still he acknowledged to himself that, whatever she 
had been, she was a sweet, good woman now ; that he 
dearly loved her, and had rational grounds for loving 
her, all of which her husband might find out soon. 

“ And it is a melancholy fact,” thought the parson, 
smiling to himself ; “ but if that boy comes back and falls 
in love with his wife over again, and wants to carry her 
away with him, as of course he must, I wonder what in 
the wide world I shall do without Charlotte 1” 


Two Marriages. 


287 


But he left that, as he had long since learned to leave 
all difficulties that concerned his own lot, and tried to 
leave those that concerned others, in wiser hands than 
his own, and occupied himself, as old age will when its 
decline is sweet and calm, unselfish and pure, in the triv- 
ial pleasures about him — trivial, and yet not so, for they 
all came to him like messages from the Giver of every 
good thing — the sunshine and soft airs, the scent of the 
flowers, the humming of bees and flutterings of white 
butterflies, and, above all, the songs of innumerable birds, 
so tame that they came hopping and picking up food al- 
most at the parson’s feet. He loved them all, he enjoyed 
them all, as he felt he should do to the very last. In spite 
of sorrow he had had a happy life, and he trusted in God 
to give him a happy and a peaceful death ; blessed it was 
sure to be, since it took him home to Mary. 

And so, in this sleepy warmth of sunshine, and lulled 
by the buzz of insects and the incessant warble of birds, 
the old man’s senses became confused, his head dropped 
upon his bosom, and he fell into a sound slumber. In 
his sleep he had a curious dream, which he did not fully 
recall till some hours after his waking ; but when he did, 
it made upon him the impression of being less a dream 
than a vision, so clear and distinct was it — so like re- 
ality. 

He thought he was sitting exactly where he did sit, 
and in his own garden - chair, thinking much the same 
thoughts, and conscious of much the same things around 
him as really was the case that morning, when, suddenly, 
and as naturally and as little to his surprise as if he had 
seen her but yesterday, his wife, Mary, crossed the lawn 


288 


Two Marriages. 


toward him. He noticed her very dress, which was white 
— one of her favorite spotted muslin gowns, such as were 
still laid up in lavender in the old chest of drawers; 
and her own garden basket was in her hand, full of flow- 
ers. She came and stood right in front of him, gazing at 
him steadily with those pure, limpid, candid eyes of hers 
— eyes which looked as young as ever, though he had 
grown quite old. But he never considered that, nor any 
thing else, except the mere delight of seeing her. He 
forgot even Keith, for she looked exactly as she used to 
do before Keith was born or thought of — before her days 
of weakness and weariness came upon her — until she said, 
in a soft, tender voice, “ William, where is my son ?” 

After that the dream fell into confusion. He had a 
troubled sense of seeking every where for Keith, and not 
being able to find him ; of seeing him by glimpses at dif- 
ferent ages and in various well-remembered forms, till at 
last there came a great fellow, with heavy footsteps and a 
bearded face, whom his father could scarcely recognize ; 
but Mary did at once, and welcomed smiling. And then 
again her husband saw her standing still on the Parson- 
age lawn, but not alone — surrounded by a little troop of 
children, in whose faces he beheld, mysteriously repro- 
duced, both her face and his own. “ Oh yes,” she said, 
as if in answer to his dumb questionings, for he strug- 
gled vainly to speak, “ yes, all these are mine. I never 
saw them, never had them in my arms, but I did not die 
childless — and all these are my children !” When Mr. 
Garland stretched out his arms to clasp her and them, 
the dream melted away, and it was no longer that bright 
picture of Mary and the little ones, but his son Keith 


289 


Two Marriages. 

standing gloomy and alone, and looking as sad as he had 
done that hazy winter morning at Euston Square ter- 
minus, when the father’s heart had felt well-nigh broken, 
and it seemed as if the hopes of both their lives were for- 
ever gone, 

“Keith ! Keith !” he cried, trying to burst through the 
dumbness of the dream, and speak to his son. With 
the effort he woke, and recognized where he was — alone 
in the sunshiny garden. He called Jane, who in Char- 
lotte’s rare absences never kept far out of reach, but she 
was some time in coming to him. 

“ Jane,” said the parson, rubbing his eyes, “ I must 
have been asleep very long. Is she come back yet — my 
daughter, I mean ?” 

“ Ho, sir ; but — but — ” 

Jane’s voice was abrupt and husky, and she kept glanc- 
ing at the open front door. 

“Won’t you come in, sir? I’ve got a piece of good 
news for you. You’ll take it quietly, though, I knows 
you will, for it’s a bit of very good news.” neverthe- 
less, Jane sobbed a little. 

The parson turned round slowly, calmly, with the pre- 
ternatural instinct of what has happened, or is about to 
happen, which sick people sometimes show. 

“ Jane,” he said, looking her full in the face, “ I know 
what it is. My son is come home !” 

****** 

Keith and his father sat together under the veranda. 
The first half hour of their meeting had passed safely 
over, and they had settled down side by side, talking of 


290 


Two Marriages. 


ordinary things with a quietness and self-restraint which 
both purposely maintained as much as possible. But 
there was no fear. People seldom die of joy — as seldom, 
thank God ! of sorrow. 

Already Mr. Garland was listening, cheerfully and nat- 
urally, as though his son had been at home a long time, 
to Keith’s account — given briefly and succinctly — of 
how, on receiving his letters, he found he had still two 
days’ time to catch the return mail and come home; how 
some accidental delays had prevented his starting for 
Immeridge till the night before ; how he had left his lug- 
gage at the nearest station, and walked ten miles across the 
country to the Parsonage gate, where, looking in, he saw 
his father asleep, and would not disturb him till he waked 
of his own accord. 

He did not tell, nor did Jane, till long after, how Keith 
had appeared before her in her kitchen, looking “ like a 
ghost from the grave,” and “ took on terrible bad till, 
finding things less dreadful than he had at first supposed, 
he suffered himself to be comforted, and soothed, and fed 
by the good old woman, who three-and-twenty years ago 
had dressed him in his first clothes, and loved him ever 
since, with a patience that he had often tried, but never 
came to the end of ; for Keith, faulty as he was, had the 
art of making people fond of him. Perhaps because of 
another simple art — he also could love most deeply and 
faithfully, as was plain to be seen in every feature of 
the brown, rough face, whenever he looked at his old 
father. 

Yes, they were very happy, no doubt of that. Was it 
a punishment— poor girl! it was her last— that in the 


291 


Two Marriages. 

first moments of their reunion both father and son en- 
tirely forgot Charlotte ? It was not till the church clock 
struck twelve, and she was to be home to dinner at oncj 
that the parson, with a sting of compunction, remem* 
bered his son’s wife, after whom his son had never once 
inquired, 

“ My boy,” said he, ‘‘ some one besides myself will be 
very glad you are come home.” 

“ You mean my wife,” replied Keith, with a sudden 
hardening both of countenance and manner. 

“ You do not ask after her, so I conclude Jane has al- 
ready told you all about her.” 

“ Jane said she was well.” 

And nothing more ?” 

‘‘ Nothing more. Was there any thing to be told?” 

The question was put with a sudden suspiciousness, 
but alas 1 not with the quick anxiety of love. And on 
receiving his father’s negative, Keith relapsed into his 
former gravity of behavior, intimating a determination to 
bear his lot like a man, however hard it might be, but at 
the same time resolved to say, and to be said to, as little 
about it as possible. 

This, and several other slight but significant indica- 
tions of character which had cropped out even in the 
first half hour, convinced Mr. Garland of the great change 
that circumstances had brought about even in so young 
a man. He felt, too, what parents are often fatally slow 
to see, that without any lessening, perhaps even with 
deepening affection, there had, in the natural course of 
things, grown up between them, father and son as they 
were, the reserve inevitable between man and man, how* 


292 


Two Marriages. 

ever closely allied ; so much so, that, in his own shrink- 
ing delicacy, the parson found it difficult to open the sub- 
ject nearest to his heart. 

“ Keith,” said he, at last, “ I do not want to meddle in 
your affairs ; you are of an age to judge and act for your- 
self now. Still, your father can never cease thinking 
about you. And before she comes in, which she will 
presently, for she is always very punctual, may I speak 
to you a few words about your wife ?” 

“ Certainly, father.” 

Yet the few words would not come. It was, after all, 
the son — the less sensitive and most demonstrative nature 
of the two — who first broke the painful silence. 

“ Father,” said Keith, turning his head away, and tak- 
ing up the old man’s stick to make little holes in the 
gravel- walk while he spoke, “ I had best make a clean 
breast of it to you, and at once. I know now that my 
marriage was a terrible mistake — a mistake, the conse- 
quence of — no, the just punishment of — Oh, father, fa- 
ther! heavily I sinned, and heavily have I been pun- 
ished!” 

While speaking he turned white, even through his tan- 
ned cheeks. Whatever the punishment was to which he 
referred, or whatever special form his remorse had taken, 
unquestionably both had been sharp and sore. 

The parson did not attempt inquiries or consolations, 
still less reproofs. He only laid his hand on his son’s 
shoulder, saying, “ My poor boy !” 

“Yes,” Keith repeated, “I have been punished. Hot 
in outward things ; I have had plenty of external prosper- 
ity. I have often thought of two lines of poetry I used 
to say at school, about 


TrtX) Marriages. 


293 


“ ‘ Satan now is wiser than of yore, 

And tempts by making rich, not making poor.’ 

That was the way he tried it with me — eh, father? And 
he very nearly had me — but not quite.” 

“You have been successful, then, as regards money. 
You ought to be thankful for that,” said the father, 
gravely. 

“ Oh, of course, very thankful. Never was there such 
a run of good fortune. It got to be quite a proverb, ‘ As 
lucky as Garland I’ Why, I have made enough to start 
afresh in England — to set up a pleasant little home of my 
own, to which I might bring some sweet, charming En- 
glish girl — English fedy,” with a sarcastic accent on the 
word — “ a fit companion for me, a fit daughter for you — 
such a woman, in short, as my mother was. Oh, father I” 
and Keith dropped his head with something very like a 
groan, “ it is a fatal thing for a man if, when he chooses a 
wife, he can not, or dare not, measure her by what he re- 
members of his mother.” 

The parson was silent. He knew his son spoke the 
truth, none the less true because Heaven had mercifully 
made things lighter to him than he deserved. And 
though henceforward his burden would be lifted off, still 
what it had been the father could imagine, though even 
he might never thoroughly know. Still, as he looked on 
his boy’s face, he saw written on it many a line that was 
not there before, and was certain that these years — the 
most critical years of a young man’s life, had not passed 
without leaving their mark — that bitter, searing brand 
upon him — possibly forever. 

Neither then nor afterward did Keith make to his fa- 


294 


Two Marriages. 

ther any special revelations of the manner in which he 
had been punished,” whether by conscience-stings alone, 
and that vague, dark dread of the future which he was 
sure to feel, or by meeting, as many an honest-meaning 
and yet most miserable man has met, and been man 
enough to fly from, conscious that her very goodness and 
sweetness is to him as poisonous as the hot breath from 
the open pit of hell, some ideal woman who is, alas ! not 
the woman he has married. Such things do happen, and 
if this or any thing like it had happened to Keith Gar- 
land, even though the temptation was conquered and the 
struggle past, his torment must have been sharp enough 
to teach him lessons such as his old father had not 
learnt — nor ever needed to learn — in all his seventy 
years. 

Still, something of this Mr. Garland dimly divined, and 
regarded his son with the sort of awe which parents feel 
when they see that their dealings are not the only deal- 
ings with their children ; that for each successive gener- 
ation, and each individual of it. Providence has a separate 
education of its own. There was a kind of respect, as 
well as tenderness, in the old man’s voice as he took his 
boy’s hand, saying gently, 

‘‘ Yes, Keith, you speak truly ; I can not deny it. It 
would have been far happier for us all if your wife had 
been more like your mother.” 

There was a long, long silence — a silence due in one 
man to the memory of what was lost, in the other to the 
thought of what might have been. It was scarcely un- 
natural ; in one sense it was even right ; for it is not our 
merit, but God’s mercy, which creates peace out of pain, 


295 


Two Marriojges. 

and oftentimes changes resignation into actual happiness, 
till we count among our best blessings the things which 
once were our sharpest woes. 

“ My son,” said the parson at length, “ we will now set 
the past forever behind us, and look forward to your fu- 
ture. Therein I see many reasons not to grieve, but to 
rejoice.” 

“ Rejoice ! over a man who comes home to a wife that 
writes him such a letter as this?” and Keith took out of 
his pocket-book the small note which Mr. Garland had 
seen Charlotte inclose with his own dictated letter, two 
mails back. 

“ What does she say ? I did not read it.” 

“ Of course not. She had doubtless her own reasons 
for keeping it back from you. Now, father, do not look 
alarmed. I shall not act rashly ; I am not going to take 
her at her word ; indeed, I could not do it if I wished. 
No, I’ll not be hard to her. I took my burden on my- 
self, and I’ll bear it like a man ; but, just read the letter.” 

And he again applied himself, in angry agitation, to 
destroying the garden-walk, while his father read, slowly 
and with difficulty, for it was ill written, and startled him 
painfully at first, the poor little scrap which Charlotte 
had penned to her husband. 

“ Dear husband” (and then “ husband” was crossed out 
and “Dear sir” put instead) — “If I may make bold to say 
it, you ought to come home to your father. He is break- 
ing his heart for you, and nothing will ever comfort him 
but the sight of you. Please come at once. 

“ I take this opportunity of saying what I ought to 


296 


Two Marriages. 


have said a good while ago, that ours having been such 
an unsuitable and unfortunate marriage, I will not be a 
trouble and a burden to you any more, but as soon as 
you come to the Parsonage I will leave it. Also since — 
as your father tells me — there is a place in London where 
people unhappily married can get rid of one another, so 
as to be free to marry again ; if you wish to get rid of me, 
so as to be able to marry somebody else more suitable for 
you, do it; I shall not object. I would never have let 
you marry me had I seen things as I do now, or had I 
ever known your father. I remain your obedient wife, 

“ Charlotte Garland.” 

“ Poor little soul !” said Mr. Garland, tenderly, as he 
finished the letter. 

“ Then you did not know any thing about this ?” 

“Certainly not. She hid it all from me — the only 
thing she ever has hid, I think, since she came to live 
with me. How she must have suffered before she could 
have written such a letter — poor, patient, loving little 
soul !” 

“Loving?” 

“Yes. Don’t you see — but how could you ? — that this 
is just the sort of thing she would do ? She loves you so 
well that she will not even let you see her love, lest it 
should seem to be an additional claim on you.” 

“ But she wants to get free from me.” 

The parson smiled. “ She wants to set you free, which 
is quite a different thing. She thinks of nobody but you 
— or perhaps of me a little, sometimes. She is the most 
unselfish woman I ever knew — except one. And to 


297 


Two Marriages. 

think that she had hidden this secret in her heart all 
these weeks, and kept telling me you were sure to come 
home, when she expected to lose you as soon as ever 
you came— lose you that I might gain you I My poor 
little daughter!” 

Keith looked amazed. 

“Yes, she is my daughter; she has become such to 
me, and such she will always remain. Keith,” added the 
old man, solemnly, “ however you may act toward your 
wife, I know how I shall act toward my daughter.” 

“ What do you mean, father ?” 

“ I mean that though I took her into my house out of 
pure duty, she has grown to be the greatest blessing in it, 
and she shall never leave it unless she leaves it for yours. 
Will you hear how things came about?” 

Then Mr. Garland began and told his son, from begin- 
ning to end, what he had written in the letters which 
Keith never received — the history of himself and Char- 
lotte. Just the bare history ; not dwelling, as indeed he 
was not likely to dwell, for in his great humility he scarce- 
ly saw it himself, on the one fact, the root of all, that it 
had been this simple doing of a parent’s duty under sharp- 
est pain which brought about the whole. 

Still, whether he saw it or not, his son saw it clear and 
plain, and recognized, with an emotion that almost over- 
whelmed him then, but which afterward taught him a 
lesson which he in his turn acted out to his children, that 
not only had his sin been covered and healed, but the 
best gift of his existence had been brought to him by his 
father’s hand. 

The parson’s story was hardly concluded, and the si- 


298 Two Marriages, 

lence with which his son listened to it throughout had not 
been broken by a single word, when they heard from be- 
hind the syringa bushes the click of the garden gate. 

Keith sprang up, violently agitated. So was Mr. Gar- 
land ; for it seemed as if the happiness or misery, for life, 
of these his children, trembled in the balance, and hung 
on the chance of the next few minutes. He could not 
speak a word — he only prayed. 

“ Father, is that my wife ?” 

“Yes.” 

Both father and son held their breaths while uncon- 
scious Charlotte walked up the garden-path to the elm- 
tree under which the parson usually sat, and missing him 
there, came slowly on toward the house. Her step was 
weary — she had walked a good many miles, and her 
downcast face was very pale and sad ; still, in spite of 
this, nothing fairer, nothing sweeter, nothing more truly 
womanly could a young man’s eyes find to rest on than 
Charlotte Garland. 

Either the creepers of the veranda hid the two figures 
more completely than they were aware, or else Charlotte 
was so absorbed in thought as to take little notice of out- 
ward things, for she came quite close to them before she 
perceived her father and her husband. 

When she did, her recognition was instantaneous. But 
even then — like herself, poor girl ! — she had self-control 
enough to make no “scene,” to startle nobody and trouble 
nobody. She neither fainted nor screamed, but stood 
there, deadly pale, and steadying herself by the pillars 
of the veranda — still, she stood quiet, gazing at them, at- 
tempting neither to move nor speak 


299 


Two Marriages. 

“ Charlotte,” Mr. Garland said, touching her dress to 
draw her nearer to him, at which her eyes turned to his 
happy face — the old man who had found his son again — • 
and she feebly smiled. “ You see, my dear, you were 
right after all. He has come home.” 

“Lotty,” said Keith, speaking in a low, almost in a 
humble tone, as he rose from his seat and came over to 
her side, “ Lotty, dear, haven’t you a word for your hus- 
band ?” 

She looked up — looked in his face — first, as if she could 
hardly believe that it was himself ; then with a piteous 
inquiry, as though trying to read in his countenance her 
sentence of life or death. 

“ Lotty, forgive me ; lam your husband.” 

He opened his arms wide and took her into them, and 
she sobbed her heart out upon his breast. 

*****•» 

Keith fell in love with his wife all over again, as his 
father had foreseen, and in the true, and rational, and 
righteous way ; not suddenly — which was, indeed, hardly 
to be expected — but with the steady, progressive affec- 
tion which is built up day by day in the heart of a man 
who continually finds in the woman to whom he has 
bound himself for life something fresh to love, something 
more worthy of his loving. For love never stands still ; 
it must inevitably be either growing or decaying — espe- 
cially the love of marriage. 

As to Charlotte’s love for her husband, it scarcely 
needs to be spoken of. It was of that kind which, put 
into the heart of almost any woman, is a blessing and a 


300 


Two Marriages, 


safeguard to herself all her lifetime, and, abiding in the 
heart of a good woman, constitutes the strength, the hope, 
often the very salvation of two lives. 

Of her sin — of both their sin — what shall we say — 
what dare we say ? except that He may have forgiven it, 
as He did to one who “ loved much.” 

Enough of these. And of the old man — the good fa- 
ther — whose days were nearly done ? 

Mr. Garland lingered on, in a serene old age, for fully 
ten years more. He lived to see about him, as he had 
seen in his dream, wonderful new faces, wherein he caught 
strange glimpses of other faces old and dear ; likenesses 
such as grandfathers and grandmothers delight to trace, 
in which the vanished generation seems revived again. 
One of Keith’s children — the first — was, as not seldom 
happens, both in features and character, so exact a re- 
production of her father’s mother, that even as a little 
baby the parson would hold her on his lap for hours, al- 
most believing he was young again, and that she was his 
own “little daughter” who never came. But the grand- 
child did come, and she grew to be the very darling of 
the parson’s heart Of course she was called Mary. 

When at last, after the brief two days’ illness — which 
was the only suffering sent to take him home — Mr. Gar- 
land lay, conscious and content, in full possession of all 
his faculties, and knowing his time was come — lay with 
his white head resting on his long solitary pillow, those 
about him thought that his last word, like his last smile, 
was meant for this little granddaughter. 

But Charlotte, matron and mother, who had yet found 
leisure from her many duties to be the parson’s daughter 


301 


Ttoo Marriages, 

still, and who stood silently behind him, fulfilling to the 
end all those tender offices which, during his latter years, 
had smoothed down every care, and kept every trouble 
away from him — Charlotte knew better. 

“ Stand aside, Mary,” she whispered softly to her little 
girl, “ he is thinking of dear grandmamma.” 

That evening the blind was drawn down at Mr. Gar- 
land’s bedroom window. No one sat there now ; no one 
looked out in the twilight upon the church and church- 
yard, keeping watch as it were — as he had kept watch 
for more than thirty years. 

By the next Sunday there was a new face in the pul- 
pit of Immeridge Church, and a new voice — which, 
though it was a stranger’s, often faltered with emotion — 
preached the funeral sermon ; eulogizing, as funeral ser- 
mons do, that long, yet outwardly uneventful life, the 
real beauty of which was known only to God. 

After the service the congregation went in little groups 
to look at the date newly filled up on the white head- 
stone, and to talk in whispers of “ the parson” — and of 
his dear wife, whom only one or two people now living 
in the parish ever remembered to have seen. But, though 
every one loved him and missed him, no one grieved — 
no one could grieve, not even his own children ; for the 
long separation was ended, and Mary Garland’s husband 
slept by her side. 


THE ENU 



I 1 



V 











Deacidified using the Bookkeeper proce 
Neutralizing Agent: Magnesium Oxide 
Treatment Date: 



PRESERVATION TECHNOLOGIES, Ih 





